Eau du Toilette

It sounds so (did I spell it wrong?) sophisticated when spoken in French conjuring up images of a lovely perfume.

As opposed to here in West Texas where it would be, and especially in our case this week, "EWWWWWW... the toilet?"

At our house the past couple of months there has been this random waft of sewer odors on one end of the house. There was no rhyme or reason to when we would smell it, so we imagined it to be a vent pipe clogged up or something.

We are having family here for Thanksgiving so I wanted to rectify the random poo smell problem.

I called the plumber this past week and he crawled under the house, lucky man, only to find that the pipe to the master bath toilet had come loose.

Sewage under our house. Sewage that in a perfect world goes to the septic tank. That explains a lot, yes? I was mortified on so many levels. He said that the kitchen sink was tied in to all of that, so there was also food decomposing on top of the ewww the toliet!

He repaired that and the sewage smell is gone. Thank you Jesus.

In other news, thank you for all the prayers and kind wishes for our American Soldiers. After I posted that, we have not gotten any more phone calls reporting attack. Instead the Marine has told us interesting stuff. Like how it is so hot that he sat the instant mac-n-cheese, that I sent him, on the hood of his crane and within 10 minutes it was cooked. He also said that the Iraqi people are appreciative of the soldiers being there. And how the soldiers interact with the Iraqi children. That makes me feel good. He is being moved to Afghanistan in a few days...and that does not make me feel so good. More prayers.

Last weekend I experienced one of the best days of my life.

This.........got covered up.
I will not think of that pool again for 4 or 5 months, when with much regret we uncover it again! Covering it was a major pain in our bottoms. It took all dadgum day as you can tell by the night sky in the after picture. Think trampoline like material being stretched over a body of water, with much of it sinking while trying to hook the springs down. Nightmare I tell you. Good thing we bought the house with the pool already there, because I hate to think HOW upset I would be if I had spent 30K or whatever it cost, on nothing more than a thorn in my side.

So, Thanksgiving at our house. The countdown begins. The honey do list is getting longer every day. Hubs loves that. My list is kinda worrisome. For starters I must recover my lovely lavender Craigslist chair & ottoman in my little reading corner.
I am terribly intimidated by this project. Wish me luck as I am starting on it today.

Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be....Soldiers

There is our Marine on the right, live from Iraq! It makes us so happy to see that boy with his cute smirk on his face. The fully loaded automatic weapon he is holding is a little disturbing... but I am glad he has it.

I wish he was here. Here loafing around on our couch. Overdrawing his account. Skipping his cell phone payments. Generally driving us crazy. All of that seems like such a better option now.

His unit has been attacked twice in the past week. He called last week after fighting for like 12 hours. He admitted to hubs that was scared for his life during those 12 hours. There were no fatalities, but some of the guys had to be flown out. They wear all that protective gear thank goodness. The marine told us that he does have cuts and bruises from the shrapnel.

He called hubs yesterday to tell us they had been under attack again. He said he now has trouble sleeping....flashbacks.

On the days we get those calls I turn into a big fragile emotional blob of jello. It is almost too much information to handle. The days between the calls I am able to stay strong and pray. I know the only humanly possible thing I can do is pray.

One side of me wants to call the president and scream at him to send our soldiers home. That part of the world has been fighting since the start of time, and I don't believe anything we do will stop that.

But, alas I am not in charge. (Thank goodness, huh?) Our Intelligence Agencies are privy to more information than we could even be able to imagine or handle. I have to trust their judgement.

Our son voluntarily joined The Marines and when he did, he swore to obey the orders given to him. He is doing his job and I am so proud of him for that.
Today as we all go about our mundane daily activities...grocery shopping, homework, Starbucks, watching TV, blow drying our hair, blog surfing (not that I do that), eating dinner with our family...and do it all in peace without fear of attack, think of our soldiers who could be fighting for their lives at this very minute across the globe. Pray for the safety of those brave men and women.

And for crying out loud when you come across a member of the military...pat them on the back and thank them.

The quilty shack is no place for a 9 year old boy

Edited to add: Some words have been highlighted like they are a link, and they are, a link to games or stuff for sale. I didn't do this and it does not show up on the Html so I can't remove them...hmmmm has my blog been attacked? Don't click on them!)

The feature about this house that sold me was not the porches, cozy interior, the damn pool or the pretty surroundings. No sir, the quilty shack was the clincher for me. Yup, the outbuilding that the previous owner was using as her hair salon had quilty shack written all over it. It was what made me sign on the ''x".

I have not had time to sew at all since we moved and it was a disaster of epic proportions.

The Marine's best friend from high school got married last weekend. We have known this kid since The Marine was in 8th grade. I spent many years yanking him around by the ear, smacking the back of his head, feeding him... you know just like he was one of mine.

He married his high school sweetheart whom we have also known for years. So I decided these two deserved a quilt as a wedding gift.

In preparation for this I had to get the quilty shack in working order.

I chose a Saturday a few weeks ago and set about organizing the chaos.

My 9 year old shadow decided to "help" me. While I was trying to organize, he was bringing stuff in that he thought would be fun to have in the quilty shack.

For instance, his gumball machine...which he decided to take apart....

The remote control fart machine...Which let's be honest, no sewing room would be complete without one.


The cat...
Cars...

And of course what every boy leaves behind......a muddy floor!!

In the cabinet in the little bathroom he deposited Oreos and Cracker Jacks.......the child goes no where without snacks.

Despite all my "help" I managed to get the shack organized at least enough to sew in.

And I happily unearthed a completed quilt top that only needed quilting and binding. Ahhh a quick wedding gift!


So the wedding was Saturday evening, at the bride's house, outside. Don't let me forget to mention we had a cold snap Saturday...and it was 44 degrees at the time of the outdoor wedding.The poor sweet bride said she was numb.

So was I. Sitting in that metal chair in 44 degree weather. I pondered during the ceremony if it would be rude to go unwrap and snuggle up with my wedding gift?

Thou shalt not covet.

But you will.

A few weekends ago MIL and I went to visit hub's aunt and uncle in Weatherford.
We had a grand time, as we always do.

Dear sweet talented Aunt Gay, who I have mentioned before is my quilting muse, gave me the most wonderful quilt she made for our new house. And I should mention it is perfectly charming. And I completely adore it. And no you can't have it. (By the way, hubs still holds his Aunt Gay responsible for strong arming him into buying me what he considered a ridiculously expensive sewing machine. Man I love that woman....and my Pfaff)
You're kinda coveting right now aren't you?

I think I have read somewhere that it is ok to covet...handmade quilts.

It's shaping up to be a great weekend.

Hi. It's me again. A month since my last post? That is terrible. So much to say, so little time.

I'll be brief.....12 million things on the list today. Including touring the original jail on our little town square. Riveting.

For Mother's Day I was so generously and kindly given a gift certificate for a spa day at the local spa. For a small town, we have a really nice, upscale, state of the art spa. Weird huh?

Anyway the day finally rolled around where a day at the spa fit into my schedule. Yesterday. I was so excited.

It started with a facial. Glory be. I believe that is what Heaven will be like. Streets of gold sound nice and everything, but seriously facials are where it's at.

Then on to a short stay in a sauna. With a bottle of water, that slipped out of my greasy hands (the facial included a hand and foot treatment) and made it look like I peed on the floor of the sauna.

Next up the massage. She first used some sort of belt sander like massager that was just out of this world. She said my shoulders were a mess of knots. Welcome to the last 6 months of my life lady. She had hot stones and hammers and all kinds of nonsense going on with those shoulders.

I was a limp noodle after that.

She left me at the end of the massage to go fill a deep claw foot tub with hot water and sea salts for me, to soak out the toxins she had just massaged out. She returns to retrieve me...with a big pina colada in her hand just for me. Oh mama.

I get out of the tub and go to get dressed, as it is now time for my mani/pedi. While I am getting dressed my phone rings and it is the school nurse telling me blonde rascal threw up. Nice. That is not appropriate talk for spa day.

Hubs was out of town, so I reschedule my mani/pedi (darn I have to go back) and take my pina colada breath self to the school to pick up my son. Classy.

B.R. was a reflux baby and so now he has a hypersensitive gag reflex. He was fine. He told me he had the hiccups and that made him throw up. You know the school does not care why, they just want the potential germs out of the building! I totally agree with that, so blonde rascal had a few extra hours of afternoon fun together.

Last night we went to the high school football game. B.R.'s school is t-i-n-y.... 6 man football. I had never seen 6-man. Wow, that is some crazy football. It is funny how 60 degrees in football stands feels like 40. I had a little blanket and was still cold! I am going to have to make an orange and black quilt for football games.

Hubs decided that he needed to get on a healthy eating plan. During the start up of our new business and moving....we have been eating like crap. Which let's be honest make you then feel like crap. He did some research and came across Jay Robb's diet. It nothing difficult, just healthy eating and eliminating processed food.

Hello? That is what we all should be doing. So I decided to jump on the bandwagon with him. This plan starts with a 3 day fruit flush. Sounds fun huh? Flushes out the toxins and food addictions/potential food allergies etc.. so they say. Day one is protein shakes every 2 hours and then veggies and protein for dinner. By the 2nd protein shake I was about to puke. Yuck. I stuck with it though and made it to day 2 and 3 where you eat fruit every 2 hours until dinner. I love fruit. Love it. But dadgum I was sick of fruit and SOO hungry.

Hubs lost 7 lbs after the 3 day fruit binge. I lost 2. Go figure.

Monday started just the healthy eating plan. Let me tell you how good we feel. Wow, who knew eating right would do that? It is remarkable. It is basically (all fresh) fruits, veggies and protein, with some natural fats thrown in.

I weighed this morning and had lost 5 lbs. this week. I have thankfully never had to diet, but could loose 15 lbs. if I wanted to be at my pre-pregnancy weight. Suppose I could do that by simply eating healthy! Duh.

The cool apart about this healthy eating lifestyle plan is that for one hour, on one day out of the week you can eat whatever the heck you want.

We have chosen Saturday nights as our free hour.

Do you know where we are going tonight? A wedding reception in the big city. Do you know that it is going to be down right embarrassing how much I consume in one hour tonight? I am going to be hunkered down over a plate for one hour shoveling food into my mouth. At least that is the "carrot on a string" that has been leading me all week. The sad part is that I am sure my stomach has shrunk and I will be full after 10 bites.

I will however, and this is a promise, be having cake. The brides cake, the grooms cake and whoever elses cake I can find.

I am going to make a complete spectacle of myself. Blonde rascal is entertained by this. He envisions his mom pushing people out of the way for food. It could happen.

Yep, it's shaping up to be a good weekend around here. How about you?