Plumber Update, Grandson

My cute butt plumber is back, but today he has a charcoal grey t-shirt firmly tucked down his pants.

My grandson, age 5 & 1/2, has his first loose tooth! (Isn't that kind of young? I thought 6 - 7 was loose tooth age.) Anyway, he came running to his mother today sobbing his little heart out with tears pouring down his face and told her, "Mommy, mommy! My teeth are going to fall out... I DON'T WANT TO BE A MAN YET!!! WAAAHHHHH!!!!!!" Poor little guy. There's just so much pressure involved when you start to lose your baby teeth.

Plumbers Butt and Tile Guys.

My plumber really has the nicest darn butt. If they ever do a Butt Crack Calendar I will nominate him for Mr. January. I'd try to take a photo but he might object.

Hopefully the tile guys will finish tiling by tomorrow and then I can post pictures of my toilets! Why should Carey have all the fun? Bet you all can't wait, lol.

If I get really, really daring I will take a photo of the disaster/slash/health hazard that is my middle child's bedroom. I told her when she turned 18 that I wasn't going to clean in there anymore. She just turned 22. Yeesh. We just keep her door closed at all times.

What Am I Doing Wrong?

I found this cute little animated .gif to use for my posts, but it won't come to life for me. Can I fix that without a lot of complicated html mumbo-jumbo? I am not an html savant. Think 'barely competent' here.

Stupid Fucking Tile People!

I? Was supposed to have new tile floors installed in both upstairs bathrooms today. Plumber came at 7 a.m. and pulled the toilets in preparation. Installers showed up at 8 a.m. and said "whuh? huh?" They were simple tile install people. They did not prep floors. My bathrooms need new plywood down, which I totally knew and had discussed with the tile floor estimator guy, who said they would take care of it as needed. Evidently he did not communicate this. So I had to have the plumber guy re-install one toilet and now I am playing the waiting game.

Stupid fucking tile people! I may send them to HD's blog to suck his hairy balls, since he's offering them up today. !? am way too pissed to be mollifyed by a little ball sucking.

Stupid fucking tile people.

What I Said in Her Card

Yesterday, April 22nd, was my daughter's Golden Birthday. This what I wrote on the blank page to the left of the pre-printed simple Happy Birthday message.

Dear April,

You were born 22 years ago today, on a golden afternoon, at 4:22. Your dad and I were so thrilled to have you! You weighed 10lbs and 2 ounces and were 22 inches long, my biggest baby. Dad cut your umbilical cord and was the first one of us to hold you. He whispered your name to you and he was so very proud! You only cried a little, even though your collar bone was broken by your journey into the world. Dad and I both loved you at once, and every day since then we have loved you with all our hearts. You make us proud, and so very happy! You have grown into a wonderful, beautiful woman and we love you very much.

Then on the right hand side I signed it like this

With love,
lots of love,
forever,

Mom and Dad

Oh yeah, above the pre-printed Happy Birthday I wrote Happy GOLDEN Birthday in hollow letters so I could fill them in with golden ink!

Her favorite part was the enclosed check for $222.22.

What Gets You Up?

In the morning, that is. I awake to an Enya CD. I just love her sweet and gentle tones. I feel content before my eyes are even open. I hate waking to a buzzer of any kind. Tom wakes to an oldies radio station so what he hears is different every morning.

Years ago, when I had to get up at 5 a.m. I programmed in a radio station that played 1 minute of dogs barking, every day at 5 a.m. For some reason that really amused me - so for about a year and a half I woke up to dogs barking. They must have taped their minute just before feeding time at the city dog pound because the variety of manic barks was just hysterical.

What gets you up? Or are you one of the lucky minority who gets up whenever you want. These days? That's me. I only need an alarm once or twice a week, just in case I oversleep.

The Easter Bunny is Dead

Long live the egg salad. *sigh* I have about 2 more days left of eating egg salad on Brownberry 12-grain bread for lunch. Then I'm good until next year.

Do you eat leftovers?
What's your favorite leftover?
Your least favorite?

Attack of the Birds

Every spring my house becomes the set of a Hitchcock movie. Birds fly into my windows all the time, looking for a nesting site. My house is deep evergreen color with bark brown trim. I live in a forest. I have huge houseplants just inside most windows. I can see why they get confused.

Mostly they can fly away. Sometimes they lay on the ground stunned for 2 - 10 minutes, then shake if off and fly away smarter & wiser birds. Sometimes they break their little necks. And every year a few manage to build their nests right on my house.

This year I have robins nesting on top of my crank-out bedroom window, and in a crany over the garage door. There are swallows in the lawn shed attached to the back of our attached garage. Some kind of fly catcher bird has glued his nest high on the west side of the house. My favorite bird is a teeny tiny little wren who is the Pavarotti of birds. Man that bird has pipes! And the most beautiful song ever. I have a little wren house hanging just outside my kitchen window.

So I am not happy that now that I no longer have a dog my neighbors' cats have started hanging out around my house! I yell when I see them but of course cats just do what they do.

In the surrounding trees I have mourning doves, cardinals, blue jays, owls, song sparrows and I assume nuthatches, woodpeckers and chickadees--but they nest high in the trees so I can't see their nests.

I like birds.

Six Weird Things Tag Thing

Kim tagged me over on her blog.

Here are the rules-
1. Reveal six weird facts/things/habits about yourself and then tag six people
2. Leave a "You're Tagged!" comment to let the people you have tagged know they have to reveal six things (or the entire blogosphere will explode and it will be their fault)
3. Leave a comment HERE to let me know when you have completed your mission

1. I have vomited directly on an international border. If you go to the Niagara OT peep meet, whenever it is, you can visit the spot. My family was driving over the Rainbow Bridge from Canada to the U.S. when I suddenly felt carsick. My dad could not stop on the bridge so he told me to stick my head out the window and puke. I did. I started spewing where the Canadian flag flys mid-bridge and continued until I reached the Star & Stripes.

2. I am strangely fond of raw cauliflower and eat some almost every day. It’s like Pringles to me. I just like cauliflower.

3. My delicate female tissues are extremely pale in color, barely pigmented at all. My gynecologist says this makes me statistically more prone to cancer of the vulva. I like to think of myself as very blonde in all the wrong places.

4. My high school student ID number was 007. I was a freshman when our high school first switched to individual IDs, as opposed to general issue ones, where you just hand wrote your own name on a dotted line. Student numbers were assigned alphabetically. Since my name begins with ‘B’ I was, alphabetically, the seventh student. And thus I was issued my License to Kill, just like James Bond.

5. I once went 37 hours without peeing. In my first trip to India we were traveling without much money—meaning via 3d class train, local buses, sleeping in the train/bus stations between trains, etc. Public toilets, wherever they were available were so horrendous that I refused to even go in the door! In rural areas, people would get off the bus for a “break” and just go in the brush at the side of the road. The Indians kind of respected each other’s privacy but as a strange foreign white woman this courtesy was not extended to me – I would always be followed by teenage or pre-teen boys. So during one trip by bus and train from Madras City to New Delhi I just. didn’t. go. I was on “extreme lock-down” for so long that when I finally did find an acceptibly clean place to pee, it took a while to get started, lol.

6. I once won a contest for having the longest hair in Minnesota. (At least, among the people who listened to that radio station.) Listeners were invited to send in the longest hair they could find. So I shook out my hair and had a friend pull out one or two from the very bottom that seemed to be rooted at the top of my head. I believe my winning entry was 39 & ½ inches! In winning, I beat out 2 horses because the radio station had neglected to specify that the hairs had to be human!

I TAG:
Puffy
Seana
HD
Lights
Nookie

Butt Cracks and Workman Etiquette

My plumber yesterday had the best plumber butt crack ever - just a hint of nicely rounded butt as he bent to his task. My sink is all better now. The plumber shook his mighty snake down a hole in my wall and blasted through the plug. Ten minutes work, $96.

Today my workmen du jour are insulators. They are up in the attic crawlspace so I guess I will see no butt crack displays. Just a lot of thumping, and when they get to that point - the roar of the insulation blower! I was expecting skinny Hispanic illegals, because Lou Dobbs says 76% of all insulation installers are illegals - but I have a bunch of big fat Scandinavians up there. I sure hope no one falls through.

Never Throw Granola Bars at Buffalos

This is something I learned while having Easter dinner at my DD's BF's mother's house. She was kind of nervous meeting us and talked nonstop, revealing way too much info now and then, lol. Anyway - this story really made me laugh.

She's a Harley rider and often goes to Sturgis (South Dakota) for the big yearly Harley riders meet. Anyway, one year she brought a bunch of granola bars to share. Evidently Harley riders are not big granola people and she had trouble giving them away. One night she fed some to a deer near her campground & the deer liked them.

Next day she went on a picnic with bunch of the riders, bringing her granola bars along. No one wanted them, but at the end of the picnic a small group of buffalo wandered over a rise and came pretty near the picnickers. She decided to feed them the granola bars but was scared to go very near. So she unwrapped one and threw it at a nice looking cow. Unfortunatly she hit a big bull right in the ass. The bull immediately swung around and charged! Causing all the big bad Harley riders to abandon the picnic and run like hell for their bikes! I just think this is so funny. I can picture all those tough, tatooed, black-leather-wearing Harley dudes pissing their pants and trying to start their bikes before the buffalo got 'em.

What made you laugh this weekend?

What did not make me laugh - BF's mom pointed out a grape arbor in her back yard and exclaimed that DD and her son could get married right there one day! Tom and I just looked and said "uh-huh."

What a Fine Mess

Just in time for Easter my kitchen sink is totally blocked! Nothing is going down those drains. Not a drop. I have poured in great pots of boiling water, hoping to dislodge any blockage. Then I had to bail the water out and try again. Nada. Stupid fucking sink.

So I took all the bottles of soap & cleanser & stuff from underneath and told Tom it was all up to him. Poor guy.

At least for Easter Dinner we are going out and not hosting!

Random Friday Photos

This is my living room, taken a couple of months ago as you can see from the snowy background! (I think if you click the image it gets bigger.







I didn't take a photo of my bookcase wall because it was too messy that day, but I have some great bronzes there, along with a bunch of books.

Sleep is the New Sex

That's what my morning paper said. Men think about it every seven seconds, women romanticize it and teenagers long for the weekend when they might get some.

So - how are you sleeping?

Blogger hates me

Yesterday it took me forever to open anything. I hate that! So I had all kinds of brilliant things to say on all your blogs, which will now go forever unsaid because I gave up. But trust me - I was brilliant. *buffs nails on shirt*

I think my DSL connection goes wonky sometimes too.

This morning there's a strange Frenchman in my bedroom. He's electrifying! (Well he's an electrician anyway.) Every time he speaks I think of Coco! His name is Dupuis. So I'll be home all day baby-sitting my Frenchman and visiting blogs. Too bad I used up all my brilliance yesterday.

Inspired by MTW - My Fridge. And a Cupboard.

This is my fridge and its contents. I know you are not supposed to store stuff in saucepans but I do it all the time. Sue me. Bottom drawer in fridge is all vitamins. I hope I made the pic large enough that you can read some labels, just for fun. I don't keep pop (diet-rite) in the fridge since I like it over ice.

And that thing in the bottom shelf of the freezer door is a 25 year old piece of cake! Actually, it's the top section of our wedding cake, lol, preserved forever. Possibly fossilized by now.



And this is my spice cupboard, along with some misc. measuring stuff. Some of the smaller spice bottles have what it says inside them, but I have refilled the bottles with bulk spices from our health foods store - much fresher & more wholesome than the usual grocery store brands. But I love the size & shaker tops in the grocery store brands. You can some of the bags in the middle shelf.

What's in your fridge?
Post a pic!

I am bad today.

Tom won't be home until after 11 pm today. So, while he is gone I am completely reorganizing our home office.

Things are moving.
They may not be where they used to be.
Some things are just plain gone.

I feel very empowered and calm, even though I know Tom will have an instant panic attack and have to go through the contents of every freaking shelf and every freaking file while simultaneously pulling his hair out, rending his clothing and exclaiming "Where is ____!!!" "Where is ~~~~~!!!" "Where is -----!!!."

Should be fun.

Because I care...

I am going to distribute money all up and down the valley. I am:

 Having my attic re-insulated.
 Putting new tile floors into 2 bathrooms.
 Getting new ceiling fans in said bathrooms.
 Adding additional outlet capacity in said bathrooms.
 Painting one bathroom
 Changing out older light fixtures here & there all over.
 Adding new outdoor floodlights.

Happy Birthday to my house – 30 years old this spring. You may now officially call it The Money Pit. On the bright side? Cute workmen! With tool belts.

White Food, hee hee

It's going to be a white supper tonight - chicken breasts in creamy white Alfredo sauce, white rice, steamed cauliflower, peeled & sliced cucumbers in vinaigrette. Vanilla ice cream for dessert. Aren't I colorful?

My Ode to Spring.

Hot, buttery sunshine warms my too pale flesh.
Tree buds swell in verdant promise.
In the forest birds have gone mad and
Trill their songs of sex from every branch.
In my driveway stands my UPS man,
My Tom Sellack man, brown on brown,
Smiling, wearing shorts again.
Oh Spring! So full of promise!