Cupcakes, anyone?

I've long ago known that you cannot reduce your fabric scraps by making things out of them. They seem to increase and multiply the moment you even think about opening the scrap bag!

Likewise with paper scraps. A surefire way to increase the amount of them on hand is to decide to decrease them by making a few paper-scrap crafting projects.

It reminds me of those Tribbles in the Grainery on Star Trek, if anyone remembers that episode. Cute little furry creatures.

Anyway, I'm multi-tasking as I watch my Netflix Movies and this is one of my almost-completed projects. It's going to be a dozen cupcakes but had to photograph them now!


What do you think?

A Drive-by Gifting

So here I am blithely typing away and playing on my computer at 5 in the morning when I happened to notice that my computer said it was 5 am but my clock on the wall said 6 am. Uh-Oh! Daylight Losing Time Again!

And then I panicked! When had this happened? It's November 2nd! Doesn't the time change back in the middle of October somewhere around Columbus Day? Oh NO! Que'lle Horror ! What if I've been running an hour ahead of myself for nearly 2 weeks now and nobody told me? After all, it's not like any of my ladies know what time it is! Heck, they don't even know what YEAR it is!!!!

Thankfully, a quick research on the net informed me that the time change was late this year and indeed, it just happened in the wee hours of this morning. Whew!

I went to visit my ppp yesterday (prisoner pen pal) before he get transferred down to Timbuktu. The California Dept. of Corrections likes to spend a lot of time and money moving guys around from place to place for no reason whatsoever, and it was my friend's time to get shipped out. Because this was a window visit, I didn't want to get any food from the vending machines because that would just be cruel. So I had to sit there smelling popcorn and microwave pizza's and all that other fun stuff and I was just starving! So on the way home I stopped at Trader Joe's and took full advantage of the gift card I got for my birthday. (Thanks, Q's!)

Of course I didn't get any actual FOOD, you know, because I was HUNGRY. Instead, I got crackers and pub cheese and a big container of coconut almond patties.

Trader Joe's was having an anniversary and there were all you could eat hot dogs and ice cream and lemonade, so I didn't really need to buy meal-food, now did I?

Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah. When I got home, I had two main tasks to accomplish while stuffing my face with pub cheese and crackers and chocolate coconut almond patties:

I had to change to a seasonal purse. That's right, ladies, you know of whence I speak.

It was raining yesterday and my open-face avocado purse was getting soaked inside and out, so it was time for the black zippered one I use for winters. Which is smaller. Than my fall purse. Which means dumping the entire contents out onto the ottoman and rifling through it and trying to pare down what is not essential. Like, do I really need 3 lipsticks AND a chap stick AND some Carmex for my lips?

And that was when I discovered...I don't really need to carry around feminine protection anymore. And I'm not talking about MACE, either. Wow! Talk about an end of an era! I've been carrying around pads or tampons for 40 years of my life now. It is, indeed, the reason that I and every other female in Christendom start carrying a purse to begin with. I don't know whether to feel overjoyed or just naked.

It did not, however, seem to decrease the weight or the bulk of what was stuffed into the winter purse.

The NEXT thing on my list was to tackle the television cable cord disarray. For a long time now I have decided that the TV had to come out of it's cabinet and be placed on TOP of the cabinet. For one thing so that I could actually watch it from somewhere other than right in front of it, and because my reason for having it inside a cabinet originally was because I like my living room to be about guests and gatherings and not necessarily dominated by the Alter of Television Worship. But since the computer is now the Alter of Dominant Attention in my home, it seemed silly to make the TV be so sequestered and hidden away.

And besides, I really needed that armoire for my quilts. So here it is:

It's okay. I'd much rather have a formal living room and a TV room but I don't mind having the TV be out in plain sight. Although...I have to say it has been about 20 years since I've had a television just HANG OUT in a room with me!

And now my quilts have a home and look happy and tidy at last.

I really, really need a new TV. I don't mean just for cosmetic purposes, either. Mine has gotten these weird orange and green spots on the screen. So that when you are watching programs, people's faces will turn up orange or green. It's very distracting. I think this means the TV tube is ready to blow? I would love one of those flat-panel screens. Just a small one, you know, not some huge football stadium sized thing. Maybe for my NEXT birthday.

Speaking of birthdays, I was talking to another one of my ppp's (Matthew 25:36) who has the annoying habit of being a Jehovah's Witless. His birthday is coming up and of course he blew off acknowledging MY birthday. Which isn't fair, is it? Because even though I don't observe that quirk of not believing in birthday presents or Christmas presents, I have to SUFFER for it because of someone else's beliefs. To me, this means that I don't have to ignore HIS birthday because it is not my belief to ignore birthdays. But of course he finds THAT offensive. It's like double jeopardy.

I finally told him that I would still be getting him a birthday present but I wouldn't be calling it that. I'd just be saying it was 'an anonymous unspecified gift attempt'. Ha-ha! Like a drive-by Gifting!

(ps: I did not type this as one, run-on paragraph. Blogger has decided that breaks or paragraph spacing isn't necessary, I guess. It won't let me fix it no matter what I try)

Trailer Trash Tudors!

I just finished watching Disc 1 of the Showtime Series "The Tudor's" Starring Jonathon Rhys-Meyers. I was gagging and retching through the entire thing! I actually went and cancelled the rest of the discs in the series because watching them would be a waste of my time.

I know by now not to expect an historically accurate rendering of facts, garments or props, but this production went beyond my lowered expectations! It was the Trailer Trash Tudors!

I could go into a Tudor Tantrum about how much this plot-less mess sucked. But I won't.

It's not worth the energy to lambaste the lingerie-based costumes (or lack of! Everyone seems determined to spend at least 15 minutes of airtime naked from the waist up, especially the women), the total lack of historical accuracy or the shallow portrayals of what were fascinating, multi-faceted and sometimes deeply flawed individuals.

Instead, I'll just do a visual sum-up of this too-modern soulless mess

Here we have "Margaret" Tudor. Actually, her name was Mary, Margaret was her older sister but why let facts like that get in the way? Showtime's "The Tudor's" had Margaret romping around without headgear in off-shoulder Scarlet O'Hara outfits throwing bitch-fits while acting slutty and haughty...one presumes in order to depict that she was royal? And regal? In the tv show she marries the King of Portugal and then smothers him with a pillow in his bed.

div>

What IS this???

The REAL Mary Tudor was beloved of her brother Henry, and was married to the King of France. Not Portugal. No murder was committed and when he died a natural death she returned home to marry Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk in a private wedding ceremony. She lived happily ever after until she died.

By all accounts she was a sweet, seemly Tudor woman of her day: pious, chaste and good.

Here she is in her wedding portrait with Charles Brandon: I think this says it all.

Sometimes a Great Notion

In my mind it looked so good! A carved rubber stamp of a butternut squash, with the word squash stamped next to it. Simple. Rustic. Really store-bought looking! Alas, it didn't work quite that way. The cards just look too plain and I had to scrap them. Maybe I can reuse the squashed parts some place else down the line. I loved the carving of the squash itself, though! That turned out cute.

I said before I love all things Autumn and I really love Halloween. I know, I know, not a CHRISTIAN holiday, but do all our holidays have to be Christ-centric? Why can't we dress up like scary things (costumes of Dubya Bush, for instance) and go out in the night and beg candy from total strangers? I love it! What a concept!

I reject the entire idea that Halloween is satanic. Frankly, it has more to do with dead people than the devil. Being Dead is not satanic! It's "All Hallow's Eve," the night that all the dead people get to have a little break from the grave to get up and stretch their limbs a bit.

Back in the day, people thought that the dead just hung out in their graves, presumably knitting cobwebs into sweaters and mittens, until the final Judgement Day when the Bugle sounds. They saw nothing wrong with letting dead folks get up one night a year and roam around moaning and wailing.

Lets remember that our beloved Christmas Tree has some pretty murky roots! It's a pagan symbol whose original 'burning human sacrifice' origins have long ago morphed into a lovely symbol of life and light on Christmas Day; a place for us to gather and sing carols, unwrap presents and sip hot toddies and eggnog.

So I say humbug to those who shun Halloween and act like their little snooty noses will fall off if asked to put out a bowl of candy or carve a pumpkin. Halloween has morphed as well! It's about decorating, playing dress ups and eating.

Which are the themes of my life, after all.

Stranger Than Fiction

I was out and about, driving along listening to the radio and doing the bobblehead dance. As I was sitting at a stop sign I noticed this blind man resting on his front steps. He had his white and red cane leaning on his leg right next to him. I saw that he had been raking leaves and the rake was leaning up against the porch right beside him.

And then I saw that the rake was also white and red, just like the cane. Obviously, a rake for the blind.

And then with my mathematical mind and powers of deduction and logical reasoning, I thought to myself, "Oh! I bet his family painted that rake white and red for him so he could easily see which one was his in the pile of rakes."

Scary Ghostie-Boo!

Well, here it is, almost time for my favorite fall holiday. I like Halloween so much more than Thanksgiving. After all, Thanksgiving is just about Turkey. Halloween is about CANDY CORN. Especially that newest flavor by Brach's. It's called Caramel Candy Corn and it tastes like autumn at the county fair.


Halloween is also about really old, weird Halloween Ephemera. Like this one:

Those kids look like they've just been drained of all blood. Or maybe it's their energy that is drained, fueling the glowing effulgence of that pumpkin head. So their Mom gets to go trick-or-treating in a costume but they have to wear everyday clothing?

Or this one:

On Halloween Strange Sights are Seen. Yeah, no kidding! What's with her head hanging on a clothesline? And is she getting ready to set fire to that rope running through her eyeballs? I'd like to own that kimono, though.

And this one is a favorite. Isn't it Merry? BACK AWAY FROM THE PUMPKIN's MOUTH, Little Tommy!

And can anyone explain this? Are they alien space gourds with pea pod arms and legs? And why is that woman apparently hanging out in the vacuum of space without an oxygen apparatus?

Well, my birthday went well! I had a lot of phone calls, lovely cards, and a sushi lunch with my stockbroker friend who filled me in on the gruesome trends-to-come once we hit rock bottom with this financial crisis.

After lunch, as I was getting out of the car, he said, "Happy 52nd Birthday! And you said you'd never live past 40!"

To which I replied, "And I Didn't!"

The Switch to Little

Well, I gave myself a very good birthday present today, although many of you will wonder 'Waaaaz UP?" I called the office and asked to be relieved of the duty of Driving Miss Kitty. You know I just talk about all the fun and funny things but there is plenty of negativity and personal attacks and verbal abuse coming from this stubborn, spoiled, invested-in-being-enabled woman.

I don't feel like a ton of bricks has been lifted off me YET, but I will after Tuesday Next because that is when I do the orientation for the next caregiver. God Rest her Soul.

So in parting, Miss Kitty, without knowing it, said something quite funny that was quite the change from her usually BIG, BIG fixation on all things BIG.

She said, "That lady Debbie has a little bit, just a little bit of dementia."
"Do you really think she does?" I asked.
"Yes" Miss Kitty replied, "She drives a little, LITTLE car."
****
I would have said it was because she pulls into the neighbor's driveway to put on her sunglasses before backing out and driving off to her destination, but then I'm just a little, LITTLE bit relieved not to have to carry on such conversations anymore!!!

Becoming Agitated: A Movie Review

As an early birthday present, I was given a membership to Netflix! I was so delirious I instantly watched one of the free online movies because I intend to take FULL advantage of all the free movies even if watching them online means they are herky-jerky and the sound gets funky.

What do I care? It's not like I watch Action Flicks!

And my first movie was Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway. Now, I happen to like her. She's clean and wholesome and has lovely eyes and lips and a very clear complexion. I could imagine her playing the role of the young Jane Austen with dignity and style. And she did, for the most part. But....and this is a BIG BUTT...

For the entire movie she seemed to be the only person dressed in Napoleonic 1810 period clothing. Everyone else was dressed in clothing from the late 1700's. And believe me, those 10-20 years makes a HUGE difference, just as it does today. Picture yourself walking down the street in full 1980's regalia and you will see instantly what I mean. Because in the 80's I wore purple tuxedo jackets with the sleeves shoved up to my elbows, black stretch-pants tights and high-collar silk shirts with giant brooches.

So instead of looking like THIS:

She looked like This:

Even though the costumer got it right for everyone else, they just HAD to make poor Jane stick out like a sore thumb. I guess they wanted her to look like Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice who seemed to spend the entire movie stomping around in an old bathrobe and a gauze stick-dress with no chemise:

What is UP with that???

At the ball Jane looked like THIS: Notice how in the background the other guests are dressed in the same era clothing which is obviously NOT the era Jane is dressed from!

And sitting on the Front Porch we have THIS:

There's Jane, schlumped in the background with hideous posture and no corset. She should be looking like THIS on an outing such as a family picnic or to watch the fellas play cricket:

But instead, she seems to be wearing the 1795 version of the string bikini:

Spaghetti Straps and a white cotton undershirt???

Don't even get me started on the hair.

Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died at 47 years of age in 1817. She would have been wearing her hair like this, for the most part, as well as dressed like this: But instead, at the end of the movie, they had Anne Hathaway's Jane wearing THIS EXACT HAIRDO:

So I hated the movie.

One of Life's Little Mysteries

I've been fiddling around with a place called http://www.scrapblog.com/ for all morning and could get nowhere with it. I want to be able to do creative headers and change my background once in a while but I can't get blogger to let me pick my OWN background. I wanted to use things like THIS:

And THIS:

Or THIS:
And later on, after my birthday hoopla, ones like THIS:
And THIS:
But I give up. I can't get it to work so my blog background will have to stay white for the time being.

Speaking of WHITES...here is a mystery.

I wash my clothes every Wednesday because that is the only day I have both the time and access to the washer without someone else hoarding it first.

If you can do math, which I can't, you can pretty much figure that in seven days there will be seven white washcloths and 7 pairs of white undies to be washed and dried. Along with a couple pairs of colored undies for evening dinner party undergarments.

But today as I was folding my clothes, I counted 18 pairs of white undies and 4 pairs of colored undies in the pile. But just 7 washcloths.

That's like 2.8 pairs of undies per day. Since there is no such thing as an eighth of a pair of undies (see previous post) at least not WEARABLY so, I can round up to 3 pairs of undies a day or down to 2 pairs of undies a day.

But I have NO MEMORY of changing my panties twice or thrice a day for the last 7 days. Am I running home at noon and donning a fresh pair? Did I go on one long bender of a panty-changing spree but was so drunk on cotton fibers that I had a black-out afterwards so I forgot?

I really have no idea. You can leave suggestions in the comments section if you can figure it out for me.

Numbers

I was speaking with a friend who recently opened a dog boarding kennel. He is also a stockbroker and has one of those analytical/mathematical minds. I always go to him for financial advice and to discuss trends. (i.e: I complain about how broke I am and he complains about the Bush Administration)

I asked him how the kennel is doing during these trying times and he said, "Well, I averaged 6.8 dogs a day last month but I need 8 dogs a day to break even."

"How do you board an eighth of a dog?" I asked, "Did someone just leave you the head?"

As if explaining to an idiot or an eighth of a child he launched into a simplistic analysis of estimates and averages. But I was having none of it! I told him, "I think you should change the name to Heads or Tails But Not Both Boarding Kennel for Partial Dogs."

There was a brief pause and then my clever friend said, "Keep it up and you'll be getting an eighth of a birthday present!"

Like Sarah Palin's Hair

I had a day exactly like Sarah Palin's hair. A rats nest of Mess in the back, and hanging in greasy strings down my forehead in the front, obscuring my vision. Yep, that just sums it up!!!

The ultimate bed-head kind of day.First off, my printer DIED. Yes, another one bites the dust. I've owned 2 computers in my lifetime and during that same span I've gone through 7 or 8 printers. And these aren't cheap babies, either!

In the midst of printing out a time-sensitive document (doesn't that sound awesome and virtual?) (Actually it was a birthday card, ha-ha) I noticed that the printer was no longer making thunking noises. Or scritching noises.

Thunk. Scritch. Thunk. Scritch. Dead Silence.

I tried to reboot, unplug and replug, threaten and cajole but nothing worked. The printer had gone to it's Great Beyond.

Scrutinizing my harried schedule for the day, I realized that if I wanted to avoid the horrid Sunday is Mexican Father Day at Walmart, I had better just head on over there at 7:00 am before going to work.

For those not in the know or not from the West Coast, it is standard operating procedure for Hispanic Men to bring their litters of children to the Walmart on Sunday afternoon's and just turn them loose to romp and play in the aisles. My guess is that it's the free version of taking them to Disneyland. They get to play with all the toys with no consequences if they break them or leave them strewn about the floor; they get to race through the aisles knocking the slow and plodding into the $5 DVD bins; they get to squirt each other with shaken orange soda bottles and SCREAM!!! They do a lot of screaming.

So there I was at 7 am with my broken printer standing in line behind a woman who had a giant plastic zippered bag like comforters or bedding come in, FILLED to capacity with chatcke's she was returning. My first thought was that she knocked over a Walmart truck in some kind of midnight heist, but in fact she had receipts for each item she was returning. Separate receipts. Which she had to dig through in order to match them up with the appropriate return.

She was returning things like a paper towel holder. And a box of bobby pins. And a brown bathroom rug and a brown bathroom mat. And some crackers. And some kiddy socks. My guess is she had about 20 items, and right in the middle of this drama she abruptly left the window, and raced off into the store to find an item so that it could be scanned for the appropriate code.

I was staring at my cell phony, realizing that my time was running thin when she returned with towel in hand and her business was concluded.

My transaction took mere moments because I had no box and no receipt. I know, I know, you are supposed to keep those things but I don't. Basically I was turned down flat AND to top it off she wouldn't even throw the useless printer away for me. She said, "What if you came back later and wanted to dig it out of the garbage? We can't be responsible for that."

AS IF!!! Like who would want to come back later and dig something out of the garbage?

So I hauled the printer outside of the store and threw it into the garbage can by the front door and proceeded to race back in and buy the quickest, cheapest printer I could grab and be on my way.

I had 15 minutes to go before I would be late so I raced at incredible speeds down the freeway and through the backstreets to my client's house.

Except when I got to her street it was cordoned off with a big sign that said, "Closed for the Cowtown Marathon". What the *!*%&#@???

I was doomed. There appeared to be one thousand slow moving people strolling aimlessly down the center of the street headed who knows where. It was more like a Cowpoke Marathon if you ask me.

Now, Land Park is an area of town where the streets go bendy-bendy. There is no such thing as just going around the block or taking a parallel street to get close to where you need to be. Streets veer off in all directions and intersect each other in 5 way stops. It's designed to Hex the Outsiders, is my guess. Because Land Parkian's don't take kindly to folks they don't KNOW coming around their town.

After sneaking through an abandoned road barrier and almost running down a small childlike volunteer who was too puny to really man her post, I was able to get within a block of my destination. But I was thwarted by a very fat copper with a BIG walkie-talkie. You know, the kind that likes to RUN things in ULTIMATE control. So I pulled out my best 'feeble female' impersonation and told him that I simply HAD to get to work because an elderly woman was depending on me for her very existance and I pointed to her front door and said, "It's just RIGHT there! And I need to pull into the driveway for emergency purposes."

He looked like he was about to tell me no, but since there weren't any cowpoker's on the block at that moment he let me mosy on down to her driveway.

I punched in the number for the teletime card with moments to spare.

After work I raced home to unpack and install my new cheap-ass printer. Only to discover that it appeared to be missing the cable that connects the printer to the computer. Reading the fine print inside the box, I saw where it read, "If this device does not come with a USB cable, you must purchase one seperately." Like: don't they KNOW? When they print up the boxes and the booklets, they don't KNOW whether they are going to include a USB cable? Like, maybe on a WHIM they will and maybe they won't???

Oh. I said "Oh."

Because that's when it struck me. The garbage. Back at Walmart. Wherein resides my USB cable in perfect condition which I threw away because I wouldn't possibly need that old thing ever again since a new printer would come with it's own new cable, because who in their right mind would ever need to go and rootle around in the walmart garbage in order to retrieve something he or she had thrown away?

Someone having a Sarah Palin's Hair kind of day, that's who!!!!

Seasons Change And So Do My Linens...You Need Not Wonder Why

Ah! The First of October! Only 17 days until I turn 52! Scary...and Oh So Real.
And I am itching to get rid of the summer decor! I looked at my bedroom this morning and thought...this crisp summer white needs to go hibernate. Time for a warm, rich, winter feel to my slumbers. So I changed THIS:


To THIS:

But not quite in the blink of an eye. Because I stored all my quilts UNDER the mattress this year and of course this one was on the very bottom layer. But I love my bedroom so it was worth it.

And now a word from the Big Baby Bibliodatum:

Last week Miss Kitty and I went to buy yet another baby gift. This time, it was for a BIG baby. Not your ordinary wee little one, but a Big Whopping Giant Baby. Although Kitty had not yet seen or met this Behemoth, she assured me that it was TWICE the size of the last little baby we bought for, and at the same age.

So instead of shopping in the Newborn-3 months category I upped us to the 3-6 months category, shuddering to think what giving birth to a six month old sized baby must have done to the mother.

After a slight brangle over the fact that Miss Kitty does not like footed sleepers because it makes it too hard for the baby to walk on hardwood floors--because you know how newborns like to creep around in the night like Chuckie--we finally decided upon a very cute little velour onesie.

Lo and Behold! Yesterday when I went to pick up Miss Kitty, she informed me proudly that the outfit we chose was MUCH too small for the Big Baby.

Which just goes to show that sometimes in life the baby really is BIG.

I'm in Stitches

Look at what I borrowed (stole) from the mammogram clinic today so I could copy it as a pattern for a wrap dress and a summer bathrobe!!!

(don't worry, she said I could take it.)

Look at what I whipped up today from my fabric stash which I am DETERMINED to reduce by half! (Don't look if you don't want to know what you are getting for Christmas, peeps!)

I must be manic. I made this skirt from start to finish in 2 and a half hours. That's less time than it takes to run my McAfee! Even the seams are finished and I don't own a serger!

(SPOILER: What you can't see from the picture is that this skirt has a 12 INCH waist and wouldn't fit a single soul living on this planet not even Barbie it's so tiny.)

(So let's just call it a prototype, shall we?)

How Many Miss Kitty's Does It Take to Screw in a Bug Light?

Ah, the Bug Lights Saga continues....

Yesterday was my 11 hour work day and believe me, I was tired beyond all Realms of Tiredness. When I showed up at Miss Kitty's to take her to the grocery she was out back rootling around in her garage. I watched her pull out her wheel chair and walk it over to the back door. There was no cane in sight which means she walked down her back porch steps and the 30 feet to her garage with no other assistance whatsoever than her own steam.

This is how I know she's a big Faker.

As we were gathering up her things to go shopping I noticed a burned out bug light on the kitchen table. I asked her what that was about, and she told me that she put it there to remind her brother to put a new one in the socket on her front porch light.

What this means is that she unscrewed the burnt out lightbulb, took the bad one and placed it on the kitchen table so that her brother could come along and put the NEW bulb in the light fixture for her.

Because although it may be a job for One Kitty to unscrew a bug light, its a BIG deal to put the new bulb in it's place. Besides, how could she remain a helpless invalid if her brother discovered she could damn well screw in her own lightbulbs?

What a Beautiful Mess I'm In

TODAY'S THEME SONG:

Going out of my mind these days,

Like I'm walkin' round in a haze.

I can't think straight, I can't concentrate.

And I need a shave.

I go to work and I look tired.

The boss man says: "Girl, you're gonna get fired."

This ain't your style, and from behind my coffee cup,

I just smile.

What a beautiful mess!

What a beautiful mess I'm in.

Spendin' all my time with you,

There's nothin' else I'd rather do.

What a sweet addiction that I'm caught up in. (Diamond Rio)

I just had to do it! I had to crawl myself from my bed of woe and make a couple new aprons. It's autumn, and those springy-summery pastels are not the look I'm cravin' for when I don my work attire each morning and head out to the salt mines.

Thank God for Walmart with it's last remaining bastion of the $1 and $2 a yard fabric selections! Most of it is crap but if you dig, you can find some 100% cotton. Sure, it's not flame retardant and I could go up in a kitchen fire like Poof! But new aprons I must have and this is how I can afford to do it!

Laying out the pattern that is most dear to me in the word! GGB's apron pattern from 1932. It's the only one I've ever come across that covers me up the way an apron should.

Cutting out two aprons at once is one of my many smart little tricks!

Getting those pocket placements just right is Easy when you have a handy-dandy reversible pattern.

Operating the sewing machine is more art than science! Take her out for a spin, Young Laredo!

Okay, making miles of bias tape by hand creates heat-blistered fingers and some very wavy tape, but it's soooo worth it in the end.

Click on this picture to see what I mean about the bias tape.
What a beautiful mess I'm in!


Hours of toil and it's finally finished.

The Padawan naps through the entire project!

No time to admire it for long, it's officially on duty and ready to go.

The Other Cat's Grass...

Mackie wants out and Spawn wants in. They can sit like this for hours, never making eye contact or acknowledging the other one's existence. Mackie will not go out as long as Spawn is on the stoop and Spawn will not leave for hours and hours; not until he's good and ready and ready to give up on the possibility of getting a treat from me.

I think there is a rap song like that:

I want what you've got
You want what I've got...

Anyway, I had a friend once who seemed to have it made. Her husband made oodles of money; she didn't have to do anything but work 2 hours a week at the local rubber stamp store so she could get their discounts;, she got to spend whatever she wanted on her Hall teapot collection and on slight acquaintance she seemed to have it all. I could have been envious but I just wasn't. And it was a good thing, too, because on further acquaintance I discovered she had a hoarding disease, and that paranoia thing where you never let anyone into your home or invite friends over, as well as a host of ailments and oddities that brought her 'lucky life' down in my opinion to a mere trickle.

Nope, I had already realized long before that, that I don't want to trade lives with anyone. Not for an instant. No matter how weird or hard or strange my life can be, I don't want the other man's grass! My problems are FAMILIAR to me. I don't want to adopt another life because of the problems that come with it. Foreign ones.

Anyway, I am pretty sure that Mackie knows his grass is the greenest, as well!

Victim Threat Level in the Yellow! (Elevated!)

Yup. I'm still the Vector for Nut Magnets and now it seems I'm attracting Victims like Quarks and Protons into a Black Hole!

Today was a busy one. I had to go get my annual TB test for work, pick up my meds. swing by the grocery for cat food and coffee filters and then try to find the nearest Safeway Gas Station because I get 10 cents OFF per gallon but only until the 30th of this month. Plus, I had to swing by the License Only Cosmetology store so I could get the stuff I need to turn my hair back to blonde from this weird Ash Head I've got now.

Busy times!

As I was tooling the aisle in the Safeway I happened to see this lady with the prettiest red hair. She had golden highlights and she had a layered mid-length bob. Very attractive! And it's my motto to compliment people because compliments don't cost me a thing and they sure do make people feel good!

So I told her I loved her hair and the next thing I knew, I was pinned between the Cocoa Puffs and my cart listening to her really looooooong tale about all her troubles. And believe me she had a few! Her husband is a cop and has a broken foot from chasing down a druggie. He has a bad rotater cuff from being yanked violently by a sex predator trying to escape his grasp; her twins have cerebral palsy; her daughter has scoliosis; her son is perfectly fine 'but it's just a matter of time!' she said; she herself had some kind of virus that drained every bit of potassium from her body, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, multiple skin lesions, and the Black Plague.

Well, not those last two but I was just standing there trying to inch away while allowing her the space to vent her little heart out to somebody who would listen!

I told her to make sure she took a little time for herself no matter what. What I should have told her is to start a dang blog so she can vent all she wants to!!!!

I could have taken a couple of push-pins out of my feet and given her a quick acupuncture treatment, but I could tell she really didn't want anything to get better. Not just yet. Not until after her son becomes a helpless cripple or an alcoholic at age 7.

Finally, I escaped. As I turned around and headed for the check out stand, bearing down on me like a bullet to the bullseye was an elderly women in a whiplash collar, both arms bandaged, legs in plastic braces, wheeling herself along with her food basket precariously balanced on her broken knees...avoiding eye contact I ran as fast as my crucifixion feet would allow.

My main reason for going to the grocery was to buy coffee filters. Because I don't own any! I own a Braun with a permanent gold filter. This morning when I made coffee in my new/used Mr. Coffee I just dumped the scoop of chocolate vanilla blend coffee right into the basket. And YUM! Chewy coffee!!!

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

As most of you know, Miss Kitty likes to talk about BIG stuff and also likes to hoard things like Bug Lights in case of a nuclear freeze she will still be able to keep her porch light on.

But we haven't bought Bug Lights in ages, however we have started to buy Tweezers. We've purchased 3 tweezers in the last 2 weeks. And we are still browsing the tweezer aisle and talking about slant versus straight tweezers. Miss Kitty will not use a slant tweezer. And no matter how I tell her she has at least 15 pairs of tweezers in her make-up drawer at home, she insists that she has to buy tweezers.

I guess she's got a BIG, BIG, BIG whisker problem. And since her eyebrows are tattooed on, I just don't want to KNOW what she's tweezing.

And then there's the Coffee Maker issue. In the 3 years I've been with her we have purchased 6 brand new Coffee Makers. At first I didn't catch on: if she said she needed a new one I didn't ask any questions about why?. After the 3rd or 4th one I started to wonder what was up with that?

It appears she doesn't like a dirty coffee pot. And she thinks that might mean it is wearing out and she has to buy a new one just to have a backup. She's got 4 used Mr. Coffee's in the garage in case something happens to the newest one, and 2 brand-new-in-the-box Mr. Coffee's just in case. Obviously she's got a stockpile of coffee on hand as well.

Yesterday, after unpacking the new Mr. Coffee we just purchased, I asked her what she was going to do with the old one? On a rare whim she told me I could have it! But keep it on hand in case something goes wrong with her new one! Because it's a BIG deal not to have coffee. BIG!!

Meet BIG Mr. Coffee

(Look, Joy! Twinkly lights on my two tiered plate rack!)

Tool Time!

There is a cool country song out right now by Rascal Flatts that is my theme song and my motto and my anthem. It's called Every Day.

I come around all broken down and
Crowded out
And you're a comfort
Sometimes the place I go
Is so deep and dark and desperate
I don't know, I don't know

Every day, every day
You save me
Every day you save my life.

Okay, now some folks are singing that about Jesus and some are singing that about their significant other, but I'm singing it about the wonder drug LYRICA.

It's the definitive drug for fibromyalgia pain, which isn't affected by normal pills like Advil or Ibuprofin or Vicodan or Demerol or Opium. I love it and I say it saves my life. Every Day.

But there's just this one thing that bothers me about Lyrica: THE COMMERCIALS.

The ones on television depict a spiffy middle aged woman prancing around in a flea market with a big heavy bag slung over her shoulder. Or dancing into the wee hours with the ubiquitous grey haired man who in real life would just be GAY he looks so good. Or standing in a windy field of daisies leaning on a white rail fence jabbering on about how she has just hoofed it over 40 acres with her mule. That's right, 40 acres and a MULE.

I think they should show it like it really is: Every day it's like somebody took one of these:

and pulverized the hell out of every soft tissue and muscle in my body. Every day. And I mean beat me up good, too, not some light percussion massage.

So when I saw this latest print ad I laughed in Wild Peals of Angry Mirth...

Because I'm like: PUSH PINS????? PUSH PINS????? Is this somebodys idea of an understated joke? Because for ME, what is sticking into my feet all over are THESE:

And it feels like THIS:

And what's worse? I have to WALK AROUND LIKE THAT.

The Slime of Miss Green Moldy

Hey, what can I say? I can't remember why I'm standing in the kitchen spinning in circles with the water running, the tea kettle boiling, my Sim peeps hollering for help while sweat trickles down the middle of my back and pools in my butt crack, but I can STILL MAKE UP SILLY TITLES FOR THINGS!

For those of you who were not born before the Flood, that title is a take on some old movie: the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I thought of another one, sure to go right over the heads of the less aged and/or historically savvy: "Would you like some Menachem Bacon with those eggs?"

Okay, today was one of those days. Up at 3:30 for no reason at all except I could tell my body was done sleeping for the night. Exhausted by 10 am with a mounting headache, I decided to pop out to the grocery store really quick for some laundry detergent and the super duper bottle of quick-release Advil. My hair was wet from the shower, I had on baggy clothes that are stained and frankly not fit for the charity barrel, and the worst shoes on earth: old red tennies that I spray painted pink once upon a time on a whim.

Because, you know, I'm just popping out for 15 minutes. I'll keep my head down low. I won't meet anyone I know. I won't be talking to any strangers. There won't be any dangers, dramas or emergencies between there and back again.

At the grocery store I successfully avoided the cute produce dude that has teased me for years that he is my husband because once, a LONG time ago he was sweeping the floor and I jumped over the broom.

I avoided going to my favorite checker because I felt too badly to make eye contact.

I made it all the way to pulling out my debit card when two ladies behind me raised a fuss about the cute little card holder I made out of paisley paper to keep my card from losing it's swipe. It's just like an old library card pocket, back when library cards were made of paper and needed to be protected. You know, kids, before PLASTIC was invented.

They kept insisting that was my hidden talent and where my fortune lay! I wanted to hang down my head and cry because, frankly? If that's my hidden talent? and where my fortunes lie? Then I'm a lost goner. Because I could probably sell them at 5 cents apiece and once I'd saturated the market I'd have made a quarter.

Finally I made it out of that store without too much fuss and as I pulled into the alley behind my building I almost ran smack dab into a downed power wire! Or, it could have been a telephone wire but how would I know? Like the Good Samaritan that I am, I whipped my car across the alley to block all other traffic and threw on my flashers.

I asked a nearby parishioner of the church, congregating in the parking lot like always, if she had a cell phone and explained the situation. She debated whether it was a 911 emergency or not while I had time to take stock of her bling, her perfectly coiffed hair, her designer shoes and the fact that her ear robot was the best quality shiny Star Wars model available on the market, I just KNEW she had time to take stock of my shoes, my hair, my air of desperate downtroddenness, and my trembling need for a big fix of Advil. Which, by the way, was all I could do to keep from whipping that bottle open right there and gnawing through the plastic in order to down a couple of them.

It's a shame, but I felt ashamed at my absolutely demented appearance. And why didn't I have my cell phone with me? What good does it do me at home when I'm out and about?

Nevertheless, I was not about to be thwarted in my quest to be a hero, so I stood my ground while she dithered about the phone. She finally decided to call the church administrator and see what he thought. I decided to handle it myself, quickly ran upstairs and called 911. I told the dispatcher that it might not be an emergency but it might be a sizzling smokin' hot 400 million volts of blue steel molten electricity just waiting for the hapless victim to come along and touch it, but it was her call whether to send out an officer or not.

Then I returned to my car hoping the cop was cute and single and over 75 otherwise he'd not be attracted to me unless he had full blown cataracts; firmly determined to have saved at least a dozen citizens from being reduced to charred ash heaps.

Alas, the cop was about 5 foot 1 inches tall, 23 years old soaking wet, totally oblivious to my flashers or my peepers, who calmly pulled up, got out of his vehicle and proceeded to roll the wire up and toss it out of the way.

Well, REALLY!