Burning questions

First of all I am irritated with Blogger. I don't know what has gone on in the past 5 months or so.... but I can't change anything. Not my font, not color, nada. Am I missing something? Do I need to download something? It used to be relatively easy to change. Does anyone know the answer to this? My blog needs a serious update & cleanup. However, I am pooh pooh-ing the whole situation because I don't have 12 consecutive free hours to figure out why I have no creative freedom with Blogger anymore.

Secondly, what does Queen Elizabeth carry in that purse of hers? For the record, I did get up at 4:45 am to watch the royal nuptials and was positively giddy about the whole situation. What can I say, but the entire thing was fabulous. I think Kate is stunning and a breath of fresh air. William is charming, Charles is a door knob, Camilla is a woofer, Harry looks like fun and Fergie's daughter's hats were just flat out bizarre.

Anyway, it seems like whenever I see the Queen, she has her purse. Her cute grandmotherly purse hanging in the crook of her arm. What on earth is in that thing? Receipts from Target? A Starbucks card? Keys to the palace? Her Jitterbug? (Kleenex goes without saying, as you cannot be a grandmother without them, amen?) Hubs thinks there is a James Bond-ish little gun in there. I vote for a package of peanut butter crackers. What say you?

Lastly, I have pictures of every minute detail from the last 100 years since I have not been blogging regularly. Bet you can't wait to see those! I perused through them just now...where to start? In an effort to stay on task with my burning questions theme....

Here is the marine on the Friday morning before his wedding. He is stationed in AZ, so he drove all night to get here. Understandably a nap was in order before the craziness of the weekend started.

Let's take a closer look....
There is a weapon in his waistband? (Probably not unlike the one hubs imagines QE to have in her dainty handbag.) During his nap, the day before his wedding, on our living room couch. Was he expecting an attack? Pre-wedding jitters? Of course one would have to think, what kind of a damper would a nap time gunshot wound place on the honeymoon?

Well, that is all. I declare with every quarterly post, as now seems to be my schedule, that I will post more often. I really like hearing myself talk, so I do hope to be posting more frequently....

In the meantime please tell me why Blogger is a butt and how to resolve it, what you think is in QE's purse and for the love of Pete, do tell if you had a weapon on your being on your wedding day.

Aperture, metering and histograms...oh my!

Now that I am 40 (as I discussed in length, probably too much length, in my previous post), it surely won't be too long and my hair will start having a lovely blue cast to it, I'll start driving 25 mph under the posted limit, my pants will begin having a higher polyester content than natural fibers and my shoes will become more practical than attractive. I can accept that as my plight. However, I am not fond of the idea of my brain turning to mush. The brain is a muscle, yes? So it must be exercised!


We had a local photographer come to our house and take some family pictures before Thanksgiving. Very local in fact, she lives in the small town where blonde rascal goes to school, her twin daughters are in his class, etc.





I know, I know, family pictures...yawn. I'll stop now.

Thank goodness for cool options in photography now days, amen? We aren't stuck with getting our pictures taken in a cheesy J.C. Penney studio. Not to sound harsh JCP, but it is true. Your studio shots are severely goofy.

She was fun to work with and we were super pleased with the results. Carol McCowan photography, if you really wanna know.

It is a fact that I am deeply in love with my Canon Rebel. It is...my precious. It is smarter than I am, and I am not ashamed to admit that. It takes super pictures all by itself but I know that I am not using it to even half its full potential. The reason for that, is... well... even the Canon Rebel for Dummies book is over my head. It is some complicated stuff.

Much to my delight, my girl Carol teaches a digital photography class at our College on the Square. Which takes place...wait for it...on our little town square. Squeal!

One of my Canon camera loving friends and I signed up for Carol's class. We are now in week 3 of the 5 week course.

My aging brain has been thoroughly taxed. I mean, I thought a histogram was a medical procedure. Oh no...no it is a wacked out graph that tells you if your picture has lost detail in any of its light or dark areas. Or some such craziness as that.

I am so in awe of the capabilities of the camera, combined with the fact that with a little additional knowledge on my behalf could produce even better pictures. The technical information has become a little easier to process, in small bites. There is a lot of thought to be put into each shooting situation, but that will become a little more like second nature with time. Lots and lots...and lots of practice. And then, more practice. Thank goodness for digital. Learning photography with film would be SO inconvenient!

I tried to get my model to cooperate with my need to practice yesterday morning. Alas she was too tired. Her mornings are incredibly taxing. Her largest order of business each morning is building a nap nest in the couch.

Worthless wiener dog.

Photography class sums up my Thursday evenings. It fills my brain and gets the rusty neutrons firing again.


Then, every other Saturday morning, this morning in fact, I fill my heart.

With fabric and sewing and a room full of fits of laughter and wonderful women! We formed a little group at the local quilt shop, also on the square (squeal!), and we are each making a log cabin quilt. Mine is stripes and polka dots, in wacky colors. So fun.

My head is full and my heart is happy, I call that a good week.

Holy Mackerel!

As a few of my kind friends pointed out in my previous post, my time line of events was missing one event. Yes, as it turns out I forgot to mention that between Thanksgiving and Christmas I had a birthday. I am pretty sure that had it been just another run of the mill birthday, my kind friends would have not even brought it up. However, since I turned 40, yes 40, 40, 40, 40...they felt compelled to not let it slide. Yes, kind friends indeed. Like Mary, my dear friend who is like 24 and to add insult to injury looks like she is 17. Yah, just wait Mary, if I can still see to type by the time you turn 40 I'll be ratting you out too! And then there was Linda, my faithful lifelong friend since jr. high. She ratted me out, well because she has lots she could blackmail me with, and also she shares in my pain as her 40th birthday was 3 weeks after mine.

40. There it is all out in the open now.

I am sure if you had asked me 20 years ago, my opinion of 40 was practically one foot in the grave.

Now, I would honestly not want to go back to 20 for all the money in the world. OK maybe better said this way, I would not mind having my 20 year old hottie tottie body combined with my 40 year old brain and heart.

I feel like I am the real me now. Real experiences to learn and grow from, 40 years of beloved friendships, always the possibilities of new friendships along the way, cherished memories and my heart full of the people I love.

Life is great at 40.

The best perk of growing older as I see it, is that you can speak your mind. I plan on losing more and more of my filter as each year passes. Life is too short. By the time I am 90, they will then be chalking it up to senility and that is fine with me.

My other thought on growing old is that you MUST maintain a cool haircut. Once the style goes, it's all over people. Again, at 90 while I am spouting off my crazy opinion, I may only have 20 hairs on my head but they will have a sassy cut. Imperative.

My good (over 40) friend LoriusedtohaveablogEaton and I often discuss hair via random text messages. It is a highly intellectual friendship we share, don't waste your time trying to understand it. Anyhoo, here is a run down of our worthy opinions....Kathie Lee Gifford clearly needs to cut that nonsense off. Every female on any and every version of "The Real Housewives" need to cut off their over processed manes. And finally Lori threw Sandra Bullock's long do at the Golden Globes last night under the bus. Just so you know.

So, back to me and my 40 year old self. I have a good haircut, a quickly diminishing filter and I am healthy (thank God for that). I had my yearly physical last week and chose to see the nurse practitioner as it is SO much easier to get in and see her, rather than wait 3 months for an appt. with my dr. and then wait in the exam room for an hour.

She made me get lab work done. I am a needle phobe and my veins roll. Blood draws are never a barrel of monkeys for me. I'll save the story for another day about how they had to stick me twice to get a vein and I was on the verge of passing out, sweating like Lindsey Lohan in church. The little lab tech was screaming out for someone to get me some orange juice. While I was screaming just find a vein you dimwit! I inherited this needle weakness from my father. Thanks Dad! Well, I guess I just told you the story that I was going to tell you another day. Nevermind.

Anyway, my lab results came back with a vitamin D deficiency and bad cholesterol at 108. So I am now taking vit. D and Omega 3, for my cholesterol. I do feel the nurse practitioner is being a little over zealous with the high cholesterol thing, I mean the American Heart Association hardly sneezes at 108. Better safe than sorry I guess. Do you know what Omega 3 consists of? Mackerel, anchovy and sardine. Blech. The 2 soft gels I have to choke down daily are the size, and coincidentally smell similar to that, of a small rodent.

I believe the cholesterol thing is also hereditary, thanks for another one Dad! I mean I honestly do eat low fat and exercise. OK so, I was running 3 miles a day for the first 9 months of 2010, until the day we boarded our plane to Mexico in September. You know, to eliminate as much beach jiggle as possible. Have not run another step since then. Well, unless you count the occasional spontaneous footrace I challenge blonde rascal to. Gotta show that punk who is boss every now and again.

Then after Mexico hubs and I did sort of a clean eating program for 3 weeks and I lost 12 lbs. All of this to say come on cholesterol, cut me some slack! I feel confident I will beat it though, what with my mackerel/anchovy/sardine breath and all.

Now that you have wasted 3 minutes of your life, that you can never get back, by reading all of this complete nonsense, I will stop.

Do come back though. I am taking a photography class AND joined up with a quilting group that I am sure you are dying to hear about! Hopefully for your sake this will be the last time I speak of Mackerel and good haircuts, in the same blog post anyway.

Now leave me a comment and tell me how you feel about getting blood drawn.

Cheers to 40!

Brain Drain.

I have nothing to say really, but I miss blogging so when I have nothing specific to say I think I will just ramble. Flush the brain, if you will.

Blogging is time consuming. Amen? Especially with pictures, that whole uploading thing is for the birds. So no pictures today.

I love this time of year. SO much. The cooler weather just makes my heart go pitter patter. Pumpkin scented candles are the best thing ever. The "fall back" time change? BRING IT! Although it seems like it is happening so much later in the year, did they change it? Dark at 6:00, love it. Candle burning, little lamps on all over the house, snug as a bug in our cozy home. Makes me happy!!

In wildlife news this week....I killed a snake with a hoe, got stung by a wasp on my finger (which incidentally in case you are wondering, a scorpion sting hurts worse than a wasp) and we were woken up in the ungodly wee hours Sunday morning by the outside dogs incessantly barking at something that was growling.

When we were leaving for church, the silly doggies greeted us with porcupine quills in their muzzles.

Sunday afternoon was spent wrestling dogs to the ground and yanking quills out with pliers. Well, hubs and blonde rascal did that. I have a weak stomach and cannot partake in activities like that.

I am going to decorate for Christmas BEFORE Thanksgiving!!! Although I'll probably not put up the tree until the day after T-day. I love Christmas decor and it just really sucks to put it up after T-day and then take it down 3 weeks later. Last Christmas was our first in this house but we went to TN for Christmas so I pretty much only put up the tree last year. Christmas decor in a new house, that's exciting! So that's that.

I bought a Spanish nativity while we were in Mexico. Love it, a lot.

Equally riveting, I bought panty hose this weekend. I think it has been 10 years, if not more, since I bought/wore panty hose.

**We lived in Cleveland for a few years during my teen years(Dad's job transfer, and then back to Houston) where panty hose are referred to as nylons. Likewise in the south carbonated beverages are all lumped together and called "Coke" and in the north "pop".... you guys vs. y'all. Yankee/southern folk language barriers, that's a good topic for another day, yes?**

I did not buy them to wear. Does anyone still wear them? Obviously someone does, because CVS had a stellar selection, I must say. I bought them to cover the cracked pool strainer basket which allows leaves and crap to go through the basket and then into the strainer in the pool pump which then slows down the filtering process thereby making the pool green and the vacuum not work and generally pissing me off in a big way AND pool strainer baskets cannot be bought in this small town they have to be ordered, meaning at this point in the game I will just buy panty hose(nylons) and get a new basket next summer.

How do you feel about run on sentences?

Pinky swear to me that you will never lose your mind and have a pool put in your yard? Or in our case, buy a house with a pool already there. Please save yourself. However, it does feel reeaally good to jump in the pool after mowing the grass in July. Fully clothed right from the mower to the pool. I think honestly the best option would be to have a pool boy. A pool boy AND a yard boy. I'll work on that, and a new strainer basket, for next summer.

I am going to make 2 quilts as Christmas gifts this year. However I am going to make a wall hanging and finish another quilt BEFORE I start the gifts. I said it out loud so I am now accountable.

OK just one picture. Because well, that dang weenie dog is so cute.

The men folk were roping yesterday afternoon and Missy was doing what she does best....bossing. Bossing the steers, horses, humans, other dogs, cats.... the world is hers. She rules it in no uncertain terms. Thank the heavens above that she sleeps inside because had she been outside with that porcupine? Her crazy vicious little sassy weenie self would have fought to the death and she would have been covered head to toe with quills.

All righty then, I feel lighter now letting all that worthless information out! Off to turn on the pool vacuum. Praying to the pool gods that we can put the cover that S.O.B. this week. Sorry, but I'm keeping it real this morning. Stream of consciousness thing.

Now please leave a comment, if anyone has really stayed with me this far in this ridiculous post. Leave a comment telling me when the last time you wore panty hose was OR if you have an extra pool strainer basket you could send me OR if you have ever been stabbed by a porcupine quill OR admitting that my weenie dog is cuter than your dog.

The return of the phantom blogger

My Dad keeps reminding me that it has been over a month since I have blogged. (It is so nice to have a fan!)

A month? Does time always fly this fast or am I getting old?

At the end of my last riveting post, we had just returned from NC. Let's take it from the top since then....

1. Easter. Jesus lives! And obviously less important but somewhat noteworthy for the sake of killing time....

A giant chocolate rabbit to keep blonde rascal whacked out for days...
Coloring of the eggs. You should know that this one says "Mom rocks"
The holiday would not be complete without the jelly bean pooping bunny. I'm not gonna lie, it's funny every time.
2. I did a re-decorating re-vamp on blonde rascal's room. I don't have any "after" pictures yet, so it is pointless to continue that conversation. Other than of course to further justify why I have been absent from blog land.

3. In case you just stumbled across my blog (lucky you) I'll give a quick precursor to #3. We moved to a small town a year ago and hubs started a used car business. We are equally blessed and thankful that the community has embraced us and the business has taken off. Unfortunately that took my willy nilly part time involvement in the business to a full time status. (Cutting out way too much of my goof off time!) Now, hubs got a taste of this entrepreneur stuff and got all crazy, bidding on an auction of 150 FEMA trailers. Now we all work 900 hours a week. Again, we have been blessed and the customers are coming out of the woodwork to get these travel trailers. That is the main reason I am MIA. I will have to devote a post to the trailers... fun times! (P.S. if you are in the West TX vicinity and need a TT give me a shout.)

4. I like Vanilla Ice. That has nothing to do with why I have been absent, but I felt like getting it out there. Word to your mother.

5. Another issue, again nothing to do with my absence but just go with the stream of consciousness right now please, is my oven. More specifically the timer on the oven. When we moved here a year ago and did a little kitchen remodel on our new house, we got a new oven. Maytag. They are generally known for quality products yes? Well the stupid timer on said Maytag beeps 3 times in a row when it is done...and that is all. Done, will not beep again ever. Is it just me or is that wrong? Granted continuous beeping is somewhat annoying, but how about beeps at intervals until turned off? I NEED more beeps in order to not burn dinner.

Back to my original purpose....

6. The Marine got to come home on leave for about 2 weeks.

He was glad to get to drive a horse instead of an armored bulldozer!
Did you ever wonder where the term slinging snot came from?....Now you know. That steer needs a kleenex.

Or what a modern day woolly mammoth looks like?....
I digress.

We were so glad to have him home, he deserved some time off after fighting in Afghanistan.

#7 I have been working on the porches and trying to get flowers planted, in my spare time. Again, no "after" pictures so that post will come later.

Incidentally while sprucing up the porches/yard, I droped an extremely heavy bottom to a bird bath on my big toe. I have had the bird bath for like 7 years. The bolts rusted and fell apart. We re-bolted the top to the bottom, and then it got hit by the lawn mower & fell apart again. It has been in the garage for like 2 years because I am cheap and bird baths are not, I refuse to get rid of it. So I glued it together last week with some E6000 wonder glue that bonds anything. Or at least that had been my experience with that glue until I picked up the bird bath and the bottom smashed my big toe right in the joint. Ouch. I got a big gnarly bruise. I thought I was beginning to see the likeness of the Virgin Mary in the bruise. In which case I could have sold pictures of it on E-bay, making some big moolah. Unfortunately, it ended up looking more like Papa Smurf.

The bruised toe has caused me to run all gimpy on the treadmill, which in turn has cause all kinds of weird blisters/callouses, skin peeling. I am in dreadful need of an intervention by way of a pedicure. No time for that......

#8 We went to the car show in our little small town. Blonde rascal took a friend from school.Beautiful cars...
Hot Wheels races....
Trophy for winning a coloring contest....
And the real crowd pleaser....The tire burn out competition.

For your viewing pleasure, I give you the burn out competition...
Nice.

The next competitor had a bumper sticker on his tailgate that summed up the whole event....
Nice.

Man, I am tired just reading all of this nonsense. I hope to be back soon. Maybe tomorrow? It IS Mother's Day tomorrow after all, so I will exercise my right to do nothing, but blog if I so choose. How else am I going to get all this useless information out of my head, huh?

Rattlesnakes on a Friday!

Blonde Rascal got out of school on Friday at noon. Coincidentally, the annual Rattlesnake Roundup in a town about 30 miles from here started on Friday also. Of course b.r. wanted to go. I on the other hand was a little more reluctant. I had been once before, about 20 years ago while in college and that personally was enough for me. But hey, you do things for your kids, yes?

I believe the point of the rattlesnake roundup is to raise money for some organization? Gah, I should pay more attention. Anyway, insane crazy ridiculously nutty people go out and catch the rattlesnakes, bring them to the roundup and there is a winner for the biggest snake....or something. (Again with the not paying attention.)

So then they kill the snakes (praise God) and cook them, sell the skins, blah... blah... blah. It is redneck heaven. Not judging here, just stating the obvious!




They were milking the venom from the snakes.Venom is used as an anti-venom. Is that right?

It was simultaneously cool yet creepy to be that close to such a feared varmint.

The following picture gave me heart palpitations....
My blonde rascal is one brave hombre!

We live amongst the rattlesnakes now, however in the almost one year since we have lived here we have not seen one on our property. ( I hope I have not jinxed that by saying that out loud!!) I attribute this to 2 outdoor dogs and 3 barn cats. Seeing the snakes at the roundup was reassuring in that the snakes were not attacking the plumb fool handlers standing in the pits. Meaning, they are not vicious but must be provoked to attack. For instance stepping on one would be a bad idea. Happily though, they do not hunt down humans!!

My favorite part of the roundup was this fine smart gentleman....
Mwwwwwhaaaaa! Cutting their evil little heads off!!! You go boy!!!


Here snakey, snakey.....
Come to the chopping block.....
SMACK!
Ahhh....now THAT is what I call revenge.

They then went on to be skinned. You'll thank me for not taking pictures of that, I can assure you.

We went to buy some fried rattlesnake meat, but it was all gone. Sold out. Not joking. (See what I mean about redneck?) You see we were on our way to some friend's house for dinner that evening. I thought it would be seriously hilarious to take rattlesnake as an appetizer. Darn it.

So tomorrow is Monday, the first day of Spring Break! Whhhheeeeee! Poor b.r. woke up feeling puny this morning. Has a fever. He has not missed one day of school this year due to sickness. What kind of justice is this?? Hopefully he will be back to full speed tomorrow.

Random thoughts and a farewell

Another busy week goes by....is it just me, or do they all seem busy?

A skunk sprayed my car. Seriously, my car. We live in the middle of nowhere and he gets my car? Miles and miles of country....yet my car is the target. Nice. Smelly Volvo, it's how I roll.

I went to the library this week. Grabbed a book off the shelf, one I had wanted, and checked it out. Turns out it is the large print edition. Who knew? I kinda like that huge print. So easy to read. I'll be heading to the geriatric section every time I go to the library now.

I have had an eye infection of some sort, thinking maybe it stemmed from a cold I had last month. The infection cleared up, but eyes still red. Now, corneas irritated and swollen. Corneal edema.... again with the who knew? Currently hoppped up on eye drops for that. I have not been able to wear my contacts for the past 3 weeks and I have seen the eye dr. like 100 times. It is finally clearing up thank goodness. I am incredibly irritated by wearing glasses. Should be cleared to wear contacts in a few days. Yay. Glasses make me downright grumpy.

Blonde rascal told me the other day that Google was not doing very well. What?? He told me he had been looking at the stock market on his iPod Touch when he goes to bed. What???

The Marine will be coming home from Afghanistan in about 2 weeks. Thank you Jesus. God bless our soldiers.

I had to have my cat put to sleep today. Hard day. Sad heart for me. He was 14 years old. My Valentine. Hubs gave him to me on our 2nd Valentine's Day as a married couple. Hubs was a police officer at the time and worked the evening shift, getting off duty at 11p.m. I got off work at 5 p.m. so kitten Val was my source of entertainment in the evenings.

14 years of sweet memories. Val perfected the aloof "cat-ittude" as the years went by."I am not paying any attention to you, I will not acknowledge your lowly presence"

Our 4 legged fur balls grab hold of our hearts, don't they?

Rest in peace, buddy. Valentine~ 1996 - 2010

Sew, what's new?

Yesterday afternoon I stayed holed up in my quilty shack. It was divine. I am so close to finishing a very important project, that will go in the mail this week. Then I can show you.

I am feeling motivated and organized and pumped up and the mojo is flowing. 2010 is the year for quilting baby. I am taking pics of all the projects I AM going to finish this year. I will post a big quilt to-do list, and then I will be accountable to finish them. Right? Right!

In other news, blonde rascal has spring fever. It was like 60 yesterday. Sunny & pretty, but still a little brisk. B.R. however was dreaming of hot weather.

First we made snow cones.Did you have one of these when you were a kid. Holy smokes it is an arm workout. Good thing I only have one kid to crank out ice for!!!

Next he put on shorts and splashed around on the pool cover.He had fun, perhaps we'll just leave the cover on all summer. His own water trampoline, if you will.

Crazy kid, his legs were beet red. Now, it is forecast to snow tomorrow. Weather is bi-polar in these parts.

Finally in my most important tidbit of news for the day....guess who turned 3 today?Mmmmhmmmm...it's Missy. She got a weenie dog baby for her birthday. Does this mean the terrible twos are over?"Terrible is my middle name, dude."

Snow, dogs, kid...and lots of laundry

FINALLY we got some snow. I know the rest of the country is cursing the snow at this point, but I have been waiting for this. We woke up Thurs. morning to 4" of snow. School was delayed 2 hours, so Blonde Rascal wasted no time getting outside.It was a wet heavy snow, the pretty kind that sticks to everything.

I have titled the following picture...
"Please God let it freeze solid and go away"


Blonde Rascal could not have been more thrilled with the weather conditions.


Likewise the dogs enjoyed frolicking.

Bianca stayed on task as usual, despite the fluffy stuff...
"Must. Herd. Horse."


Our newest addition, Jake (the Australian Shepherd that showed up at our house a few weeks ago and after checking with the pound for a searching owner, we could not turn his lovable self away) was beside himself.
He is slightly A.D.H.D and the largest sugar lump personality I have ever seen. He thrives on lovin'.


Of course it goes without saying that the most entertaining part of the 4" snow was the minature weenie dog with 3" legs.

"Missy, where are you?"
"Huh?"



There was no walking through the snow for her. No sir, it required more of a flopping, bucking motion.

Speaking of flopping, check out those ears...


Because she had to plow through the snow, it completely stuck to her.
She was the abominable snow weenie.


Good times for sure. Except that B.R. changed wet clothes 3x's that morning, 2 more that afternoon. And now, now it is mud. Which requires ridiculous use of the washing machine. Additionally I will mention that Missy has had three baths in as many days. Oh well, snow and mud are what little boys (and their dogs) thrive on, right?

Hope everyone it having a great V-Day with their loved ones. My two favorite fellas and I went to church this morning and are now spending a leisurely Sunday together.

Tomorrow is a school holiday and we are going to the big city for teeth cleanings and then an orthodontist appt. Blonde Rascal is somewhat irritated that his holiday is chocked full of dental appointments. Poor kid, rough life.