Last night I locked myself into the bathroom to take care of basic girl maintenance issues. You know the kind, shave here, pluck there, clip toenails etc. I had strange flashback in time and made me start wondering "What ever happened to..."
To tell this story I must give you a little background though. When I was in college I worked the automotive department at the local Wal-Mart. Late one evening like 9:30 or 10:00 as I was finishing up my jobs for the night a couple of girls in their late teens/early twenties stopped me and asked a question. Nothing new, I was asked where things were like 2345 times a night. However this one was odd, the girls asked me where they could find a facial hair bleaching kit. Well I worked in AUTOMOTIVE, I knew exactly where the turtle wax was and I was really good at figuring out which car battery or oil filter you needed, but the only thing I knew about the cosmetic department was where it was. Of course I told them to look there as we stood near the tire display. The conversation continued that they had already looked there and there were no bleaching kits. Being girl talk I advised that they had waxing kits there (not turtle wax) but they didn't want to do that as the one girl, who really did need to do something with that mustache, was going to get married the next morning, and she didn't want to risk her upper lip being red. Well it was late and a small town with nothing else open so I wished her luck and went on.
Last night that popped into my head and I got to wondering if the bride to be walked down the aisle with fuzz on her upper lip. Then I wondered "Who in their right mind doesn't realize they should do something about their "she-stache" further out than the night before her wedding" Really? I'm sure Kate Middleton polished, buffed, shaved, waxed and whatever other treatment that could be dreamed of before her big shin-dig today. Heck even I made sure my woolly eyebrows were tame a week or so before my rather humble nuptials. See strange things pop into my head.
Last night I started reading a book about 8:30 or so. It wasn't a thick book but it engrossed me and I finished the last page at 3:00 am this morning. The book was "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. Definitely worth the read, I hope your able to put it down and sleep.
Since I finished the book just as the royal wedding coverage was starting I flipped it on (I wanted to see it but hadn't really planned to get up that early for it) and became engrossed in the amount of crazy hats the wedding guests were wearing. Really, I LOVE HATS, I wish we Americans would take them up a little bit but some of those creations were un-real! I'm sure the designers got their ideas from Dr. Suess books.
I watched the wedding hoopla till around 7:00 am and decided I should really try to sleep a little so I crawled in the guest bed downstairs and managed to get about an hour of sleep before the kids and hubby were up and making racket. Yeah I'm running on one hour of sleep today, wonder how I'm gonna be holding up at 3pm?
The dishwasher died yesterday as well. Yay (in a very sarcastic tone) Hubby took it apart and looked at and determined it needed a new keypad, easily fixed but the part is $150 and the gasket around the door leaks some. So now we are weighing the benefits of spending $150 on a machine that works well but leaks a little (I'm talking like two tablespoons of water a load) or just going and buying a new machine. In the meantime I'm back to hand washing dishes and that sucks.
Happy day
WINNIE'S LITTER Just a little blog of the ins and outs and ups and downs in the life of a mom.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
A Funny Story to Share
A post on a forum I'm a part of reminded me of a story that at the time was like a horribly gone wrong sit-com. Now it's family lore and laughed at from time to time.
A few months before Hubby and I married we made a quick trip to northern Minnesota from Arkansas as Hubby was a groomsman in his cousin's wedding. We were living together and had a black lab mix dog that was roughly 9 months old (the original Winnie). Being quite broke we didn't have the cash to put the dog in a kennel and didn't really have someone to leave her with for the long weekend, so we loaded her up in the car. Now Winnie was a good dog but had one nasty habit of getting car sick. We knew this and had called the vet and gotten some tranquilizers to settle her down and hopefully prevent having a hyper lab-like pup bouncing around in the backseat of a Chrysler LeBaron for 19 hours. The trip up was pretty un-eventful. The dog behaved well and hid her milk-bones at every pottie break. She wasn't too interested in food but we took that as a good sign she wouldn't puke in the car. We get up north for the wedding festivities and Winnie hung out in Grandma's garage with occasional forays of freedom into the yard to do her business and get a little attention. The night before we left for home Hubby in all of his wisdom brought home some bones from his father's house putting the chewy pup in ecstasy all night in the garage. The next morning we arose early, drugged the dog, and loaded up. Somewhere around the 12 hour mark we decide to stop and eat at a Country Kitchen. When we stopped the dog was whining and pacing around but the area around the restaurant was just a big muddy pit so we figured we'd eat and then go find her a place to run for bit before hitting the road again. We go in and eat and we come out we see this rather large dog in the back window well where the convertible top of the car would normally fold down into and we knew something was up. It was very clear when we opened the doors. OMG (that really wasn't what we said) there was runny dog poo on every seat, under the seats, on the floorboards. EVERYWHERE. The dog had some serious bowel issues happening. We let her out into the mud, cause, hey mud is nice compared to this and watched the poor animal retch and squirt while we tried to figure out what to do. Mind you we are still a good 9 hours or more from home and both of us had to be at work first thing in the morning.
Luckily there was a Wal-Mart 1/2 mile down the road or so. Hubby walked and purchased rags, paper towels, carpet cleaner, garbage bags and some ugly old rugs that were on clearance we could sit on because our seats would be wet. We proceeded to scrub out the car in the back of the Country Kitchen with the occasional gag on our part. It was awful. I've cleaned up horrible poop messes by the kids and to this day nothing tops the doggie diarrhea in that car. We get the car somewhat to a minimal health hazard and climb in to sit our rears on ugly clearance rack rugs to get home. We managed to get home sometime in the middle of the night and fall into bed.
Needless to say morning came too early and I had to drive the poop-mobile to work the next morning for my 45 min commute. Pleasant. The windows stayed down all day at work as I watched the miasma escape from my office window. When I arrived home Hubby removed the bucket seats and we scrubbed and cleaned some more. Luckily it was spring so the windows were down often during the day and the odor finally dissipated somewhere three to four weeks later though it still had a tinge on the hottest days.
The moral of the story. When you dog is dancing to get out of a car let them out to do their business regardless to the mud situation. Mud is only dirt. Shit is shit.
A few months before Hubby and I married we made a quick trip to northern Minnesota from Arkansas as Hubby was a groomsman in his cousin's wedding. We were living together and had a black lab mix dog that was roughly 9 months old (the original Winnie). Being quite broke we didn't have the cash to put the dog in a kennel and didn't really have someone to leave her with for the long weekend, so we loaded her up in the car. Now Winnie was a good dog but had one nasty habit of getting car sick. We knew this and had called the vet and gotten some tranquilizers to settle her down and hopefully prevent having a hyper lab-like pup bouncing around in the backseat of a Chrysler LeBaron for 19 hours. The trip up was pretty un-eventful. The dog behaved well and hid her milk-bones at every pottie break. She wasn't too interested in food but we took that as a good sign she wouldn't puke in the car. We get up north for the wedding festivities and Winnie hung out in Grandma's garage with occasional forays of freedom into the yard to do her business and get a little attention. The night before we left for home Hubby in all of his wisdom brought home some bones from his father's house putting the chewy pup in ecstasy all night in the garage. The next morning we arose early, drugged the dog, and loaded up. Somewhere around the 12 hour mark we decide to stop and eat at a Country Kitchen. When we stopped the dog was whining and pacing around but the area around the restaurant was just a big muddy pit so we figured we'd eat and then go find her a place to run for bit before hitting the road again. We go in and eat and we come out we see this rather large dog in the back window well where the convertible top of the car would normally fold down into and we knew something was up. It was very clear when we opened the doors. OMG (that really wasn't what we said) there was runny dog poo on every seat, under the seats, on the floorboards. EVERYWHERE. The dog had some serious bowel issues happening. We let her out into the mud, cause, hey mud is nice compared to this and watched the poor animal retch and squirt while we tried to figure out what to do. Mind you we are still a good 9 hours or more from home and both of us had to be at work first thing in the morning.
Luckily there was a Wal-Mart 1/2 mile down the road or so. Hubby walked and purchased rags, paper towels, carpet cleaner, garbage bags and some ugly old rugs that were on clearance we could sit on because our seats would be wet. We proceeded to scrub out the car in the back of the Country Kitchen with the occasional gag on our part. It was awful. I've cleaned up horrible poop messes by the kids and to this day nothing tops the doggie diarrhea in that car. We get the car somewhat to a minimal health hazard and climb in to sit our rears on ugly clearance rack rugs to get home. We managed to get home sometime in the middle of the night and fall into bed.
Needless to say morning came too early and I had to drive the poop-mobile to work the next morning for my 45 min commute. Pleasant. The windows stayed down all day at work as I watched the miasma escape from my office window. When I arrived home Hubby removed the bucket seats and we scrubbed and cleaned some more. Luckily it was spring so the windows were down often during the day and the odor finally dissipated somewhere three to four weeks later though it still had a tinge on the hottest days.
The moral of the story. When you dog is dancing to get out of a car let them out to do their business regardless to the mud situation. Mud is only dirt. Shit is shit.
We are SO gonna win parents of the year award...
We are SO gonna win parents of the year award. Ha Ha, not likely. No we haven't done anything to scar our children for life like kill a rabbit and tell them it was the Easter Bunny or completely just forget about Easter Bunny hoopla. We did sleep through it however. Yeah I know, not one picture of smiling chocolate covered faces or running through the yard hunting eggs. Nothing. Saturday night I was assembling the baskets and determined they were rather anemic so I ran to Walgreens and just barely made it in five minutes before closing. Grabbing a few items of basket junk I streaked home and finished filling the baskets with enough sugar to put the kids into a diabetic coma. We were awakened by excited kids at some ungodly hour annoucing that the Easter Bunny had come, we proclaimed that was great and rolled over. Fifteen minutes later hopped up on sugar Sonny Boy comes in and declares that the Easter Bunny had left eggs on the roofing material in the yard. Hubby groggily tells them they could go get them, I rolled over. We hear the kids scrambling into clothes (hey at least the didn't go out in pajamas) and run to the yard to grab the loot. A little while later they were back in the upstairs hallway opening eggs and counting jelly beans. Somewhere about this time I managed to haul my carcase out of bed and see the damage. Sonny Boy had managed to consume somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 pounds of sugar, Igor about 5 pounds. I declare a moratorium on sugar consumption and stagger to the kitchen to come up with the least sweet thing I could think of for breakfast. Hubby soon staggers down after me and we begin the nightmare of getting ready for church.
After the craziness that ensues when trying to get all four of us out the door decently dressed and on time we pile in the van and make the corner of the lot. Littered in the front yard we see some opened eggs and a note that very clearly said "Igor" on it that had identified which basket belonged to whom. Now I KNOW that the Easter Bunny had only hidden eggs in the side yard which is fenced in so I can imagine the mayhem that was ensuing while we snoozed and the kids egg hunted in the lawn. I'm sure the neighbors were wondering where the hell we were.
Even with our unnoticed absence Easter went well. We managed to get to church and I cooked a ham for supper. We have a lot of ham now. The ham was a part of a 1/2 pig we purchased after Christmas and we figured we should make use of it instead of letting it sit in the freezer until doomsday. So if your in the mood for a ham sandwich come on over, we are stocked well in that department for several weeks.
Sonny Boy is on Spring Break this week, I'm on jury duty. Luckily I didn't have to go in today, I'll know about tomorrow this evening. I wrangled both kids to the optical shop today and got Igor some new glasses on order. His current ones have taken quite a beating lately and they were el cheapo's from Zenni. Igor's Rx is so strong which equals thick, that he has rather sharp edges and he has at least three fresh cuts (they are small) from his glasses. The new ones will be much thinner and I think will stay up on his nose better as they have a different bridge AND cable temples that wrap around his ear as well. Thank Goodness for vision insurance, the glasses without insurance would have been $500 +, with insurance the total came to $209. Still not cheap but a whole lot better. While at the optical shop I made an appointment for myself for next week to be evaluated for Lasik. Honestly I'm scared snotless by the whole idea but I think they'll give me a valium or something for the procedure. I know I have to be at least somewhat awake but I don't really want to be thinking clearly. I'd love to lose my glasses. We'll see how that goes. Our insurance pays a good chunk of the surgery and since we've spent so much money on medical this year might as well push it and see if we'll meet the percentage for an income tax write off.
Hope your easter was good. This is the part I'd post a sweet picture of the boys with their baskets dressed in their precious Easter clothes. But now you know it's not simple laziness of not posting the pictures.
After the craziness that ensues when trying to get all four of us out the door decently dressed and on time we pile in the van and make the corner of the lot. Littered in the front yard we see some opened eggs and a note that very clearly said "Igor" on it that had identified which basket belonged to whom. Now I KNOW that the Easter Bunny had only hidden eggs in the side yard which is fenced in so I can imagine the mayhem that was ensuing while we snoozed and the kids egg hunted in the lawn. I'm sure the neighbors were wondering where the hell we were.
Even with our unnoticed absence Easter went well. We managed to get to church and I cooked a ham for supper. We have a lot of ham now. The ham was a part of a 1/2 pig we purchased after Christmas and we figured we should make use of it instead of letting it sit in the freezer until doomsday. So if your in the mood for a ham sandwich come on over, we are stocked well in that department for several weeks.
Sonny Boy is on Spring Break this week, I'm on jury duty. Luckily I didn't have to go in today, I'll know about tomorrow this evening. I wrangled both kids to the optical shop today and got Igor some new glasses on order. His current ones have taken quite a beating lately and they were el cheapo's from Zenni. Igor's Rx is so strong which equals thick, that he has rather sharp edges and he has at least three fresh cuts (they are small) from his glasses. The new ones will be much thinner and I think will stay up on his nose better as they have a different bridge AND cable temples that wrap around his ear as well. Thank Goodness for vision insurance, the glasses without insurance would have been $500 +, with insurance the total came to $209. Still not cheap but a whole lot better. While at the optical shop I made an appointment for myself for next week to be evaluated for Lasik. Honestly I'm scared snotless by the whole idea but I think they'll give me a valium or something for the procedure. I know I have to be at least somewhat awake but I don't really want to be thinking clearly. I'd love to lose my glasses. We'll see how that goes. Our insurance pays a good chunk of the surgery and since we've spent so much money on medical this year might as well push it and see if we'll meet the percentage for an income tax write off.
Hope your easter was good. This is the part I'd post a sweet picture of the boys with their baskets dressed in their precious Easter clothes. But now you know it's not simple laziness of not posting the pictures.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Long Time, No Post
Things are going pretty well here at the Litter's nest. When things run smoothly I don't really have much to post about because frankly craziness is funny and laundry is not. So today I post just because I'm feeling guilty.
Since moving back to the original nest in Wisconsin Hubby and I have decided we must do some much needed work to the old house since property values have crashed so much we will be living here for quite a while now. In the fall we had a flexible roofing material put on the porch roof (it's a flat roof and was leaking) and installed a new high efficiency boiler and hot water heater so we could remove the chimneys when we re-roof. Currently I have a pallet of OSB in the yard and I'm waiting on the contractor to finish a job before he comes and opens up our roof down to the rafters to remove the chimneys, insulate the walls, re-sheath (there is no solid sheathing up there, just 2 layers of asphalt over the original cedar shakes), new shingles, install a bathroom vent and a tubular skylight. When that mess is over we plan on giving the old girl a new coat of paint. We plan on changing the color and exactly what color to paint has been a big topic of conversation. The most helpful thing I've found on line is Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer Tool which is pretty cool. This thing lets you upload a picture and "paint" the house or room different colors to see how they look. I haven't done any of the interior stuff but it works pretty well with the exterior. Of course your not getting the perfect nuances of the color on your computer screen but it gives the general idea. I'll most likely buy a few quarts of paint and patchwork on the house before I go whole hog but at least I'll have the field narrowed down a bit. We also have the power company lined up to top out a couple of trees and get them out of the power lines so Hubby can play with his chainsaw and drop them the rest of the way. Removing one will open up the front of the house a bit and allow us some room to re-do some landscaping. The other two will be to hopefully allow some grass to grow and be down when we ever get the money to build a new garage in a few years. Ah, big plans.
Sonny Boy is now in full force Rookie League baseball. Here that means machine pitch. He's only had a couple of practices so far and both have been so cold I hid in the van. The weather is just miserable for April.
School is out next week for spring break. What a late spring break! I suppose they are tying it into Easter and that falls late this year. We had hoped to travel a little, visit family and such but I got a summons for jury duty for that week. Yuck. I could have had it deferred once but was worried it would crop up when Hubby was scheduled for one of his long haul training trips and I would really be up a creek for child care. Currently the plan is IF I have to go in Hubby will work from home and let the kids watch entirely too much TV. I understand it's a real pain here as there isn't much parking near the courthouse. The court did send a pass for my dashboard so I could park in the meters but I don't really want to advertise I'm going to be away from my vehicle for hours in that neighborhood. I hope I don't have to sit on some long drawn out case.
Today is a holiday from school for Sonny Boy and it was supposed to be for Hubby. I don't think Hubby's customer's quite got that memo though as he's off working with one today. Hubby did have his first emergency "run to hold a customer's hand" the other day after a customer from Brazil had issues in Chicago. I hope that doesn't happen too much.
Well I suppose that's about it. I've let the kids veg in front of the TV too much today. The weather stinks so there is no throwing them outside and I'm not in the mood to listen to their craziness. I've promised them a trip to the movies to go see the 3:00 showing of Rio. Hope it's worth the $6 a head to get in, not to mention the $20 of popcorn.
Since moving back to the original nest in Wisconsin Hubby and I have decided we must do some much needed work to the old house since property values have crashed so much we will be living here for quite a while now. In the fall we had a flexible roofing material put on the porch roof (it's a flat roof and was leaking) and installed a new high efficiency boiler and hot water heater so we could remove the chimneys when we re-roof. Currently I have a pallet of OSB in the yard and I'm waiting on the contractor to finish a job before he comes and opens up our roof down to the rafters to remove the chimneys, insulate the walls, re-sheath (there is no solid sheathing up there, just 2 layers of asphalt over the original cedar shakes), new shingles, install a bathroom vent and a tubular skylight. When that mess is over we plan on giving the old girl a new coat of paint. We plan on changing the color and exactly what color to paint has been a big topic of conversation. The most helpful thing I've found on line is Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer Tool which is pretty cool. This thing lets you upload a picture and "paint" the house or room different colors to see how they look. I haven't done any of the interior stuff but it works pretty well with the exterior. Of course your not getting the perfect nuances of the color on your computer screen but it gives the general idea. I'll most likely buy a few quarts of paint and patchwork on the house before I go whole hog but at least I'll have the field narrowed down a bit. We also have the power company lined up to top out a couple of trees and get them out of the power lines so Hubby can play with his chainsaw and drop them the rest of the way. Removing one will open up the front of the house a bit and allow us some room to re-do some landscaping. The other two will be to hopefully allow some grass to grow and be down when we ever get the money to build a new garage in a few years. Ah, big plans.
Sonny Boy is now in full force Rookie League baseball. Here that means machine pitch. He's only had a couple of practices so far and both have been so cold I hid in the van. The weather is just miserable for April.
School is out next week for spring break. What a late spring break! I suppose they are tying it into Easter and that falls late this year. We had hoped to travel a little, visit family and such but I got a summons for jury duty for that week. Yuck. I could have had it deferred once but was worried it would crop up when Hubby was scheduled for one of his long haul training trips and I would really be up a creek for child care. Currently the plan is IF I have to go in Hubby will work from home and let the kids watch entirely too much TV. I understand it's a real pain here as there isn't much parking near the courthouse. The court did send a pass for my dashboard so I could park in the meters but I don't really want to advertise I'm going to be away from my vehicle for hours in that neighborhood. I hope I don't have to sit on some long drawn out case.
Today is a holiday from school for Sonny Boy and it was supposed to be for Hubby. I don't think Hubby's customer's quite got that memo though as he's off working with one today. Hubby did have his first emergency "run to hold a customer's hand" the other day after a customer from Brazil had issues in Chicago. I hope that doesn't happen too much.
Well I suppose that's about it. I've let the kids veg in front of the TV too much today. The weather stinks so there is no throwing them outside and I'm not in the mood to listen to their craziness. I've promised them a trip to the movies to go see the 3:00 showing of Rio. Hope it's worth the $6 a head to get in, not to mention the $20 of popcorn.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)