Go Fuze Yourself

I am going to fuze myself all day long. We are starting our 19th consequtive day of 90+ temperatures, most of them high 90s, like 98, 98. Yesterday was 99. Today we are supposed to hit 100+'. And freakin' humid. We might as well live in Houston! I plan to fuze myself all day long.

Okay. Blogger won't let me add a pic this morning, so the joke's on me. Fuze is a drink, one of those 5% fruit juice things. My favorite flavor is Dragonfruit Lime. It is so super delicious & cooling! The flavors I like all are 5 or 10 calories, without any artificial sweeteners added.

So. Right here - { } - picture my photo of a bottle of Fuze sitting on my computer desk. Stupid Blogger.

Where are you neat? Where are you not?

I am extremely neat & orderly in how I load things into the dishwasher. I can fit an amazing amount in with nothing so crowded or poorly positioned that it does not get clean. My daughter? (and the reason for this post) appears to throw things in from a distance of 10 feet. I can't stand it.

I am neat in how I put things on the kitchen shelves. I am not neat in what I put in kitchen drawers. My silverware is forced into organization by the divider thing. All other drawers are a jumble. Some are a themed jumble, but a jumble nonetheless.

I am neat in how I hang things in my closet. I am not neat with clothes in drawers, which are a jumble.

I am neat about where I put bills and paying them. I am not neat with all other mail which sits in a jumble for weeks sometimes until I get sick enough of it to open every freaking thing & decided if it is a save or toss item. Almost always it is a toss item but once in a while I find something important--so I have to physically open & look at every freakin' thing.

I am neat in the living room, where my books and art are. I am not neat in other rooms which accumulate carp at an amazing rate.

I am neat with my recycling corner. I am not with things on the kitchen countertop. (Daughter & her BF regard the recycling containers as a "pile it higher & deeper" discard pile. I hate that!)

I am neat with where stuff is in my purse. I am not neat with the stuff on my bedside nightstand.

I am neat with where stuff is in my car's console. I am not neat with stuff I keep on the floor in back (random umbrellas, hats, carry-alls, map books etc - no trash back there.)

So, where are you neat and where are you not?

Fooling Mother Nature

On Monday right at about 5 o'clock I had all the igredients for a lovely stir-fry cut up, in the pan and ready to quick cook. We love stir-fry and it's a great dish because it cooks in 5 or 6 minutes so I don't start cooking until Tom walks in the door.

Monday, Tom walks in at about 6:45 just ahead of some pouring rain. We get a little wind gust and *poof* no electric power! So I stick my lovely stir-fry in the frige and we eat cold sandwiches. (Power comes back in 3 hours, a typical summer power out around here.)

Tuesday, big clouds blow up again at about 5 o'clock - so I decide to quick cook the stir-fry, because Mother Nature can't fool me twice in a row lol. Big wind; power stays on. Tom gets home at 6:30 and we eat mushy, over-cooked stir-fry. Rain & more wind. The power stays on, but my satellite goes out! My satellite!

And it's still out! I MISS MY DISH!!! I have shows to watch, lol! I can get the local network channels but not the other 700 (or whatever) channels. DISH guy can't come out to the house until Friday.

How will I live?

What will I do?

I MISS MY DISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Body Worlds

I really enjoyed the Body Worlds exhibit! It was interesting in a scientific and scientific-curiosity way. Here is the link for the show at the Science Museum of Minnesota:


The spectacular part of the exhibit is the display of preserved bodies. They are designed to present different body 'systems' - the muscle system, the nervous system, circulation, etc. by showing those parts of an actual preserved human body, fully articulated. I was not spooked by it at all. Of course I worked for years in a medical school so maybe I am a little more sanguine about stuff like that - I don't know. I thought it was fascinating.

It was also beautiful. There was a great artistry in posing the bodies in various (mostly athletic) postures. You really got a sense of what a complex yet fragile thing the human body is. All those improbable structures of bone, nerve and flesh somehow holding each other together and forming a functional body. Amazing!

It was also interesting to observe the people attending. Compared to most other exhibits I have been to people were very quiet & almost reverential in their intense fascination. It was a lovely display. They had a reservation system and let in so many people every 15 minutes. The exhibit took me about an hour and 15 minutes to go through.


This photo doesn't do justice to the finished work, but I thought it was interesting. The display was meant to show the muscles involved in locomotion - so von Hagen (the guy whose idea, techniques & efforts created the preserved bodies) posed a skeleton as though running and then pulled away the layers of muscle to clearly display them all. Instead of just spreading the muscles out in a flat and static-looking display he had them fan out as though they were flapping in the wind while the runner ran. IRL it looked beautiful. In this photo is just looks a bit strange.

One thing he did that I couldn't decide over was that he added eyeballs, lips and noses to most of the articulated displays. I guess it was an attempt to emphasize and preserve the humanity of the people whose bodies he had preserved. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it was distracting.

There were also a lot of non-articulated, preserved body parts on display--diseased and normal hearts, clogged and clean arteries, bone joints, etc.

I think it is well worth going to see.

This Weekend

On Saturday Tom, DS and I are going to visit the MIL's farm in WI. On the way we will stop for pizza (sigh--it's always pizza) in Menomonie. At least temps are not going to be in the high 90s! Still, my least favorite SIL is visiting so it will be a trip of highlights and low lights. The last time we were there she had a bunch of vacation photos organized into a Power Point presentation, lol.

Then on Sunday Tom and I are going into the Science Museum in St Paul to see BodyWorld. That should be really interesting. I have seen several mummies, but never more recently preserved bodies so it should be quite interesting. I'm quite excited to see it, actually.

Poor Kid

My oldest daughter is in Paris this week, and Paris is in the middle of a 100+ degree heat wave. The friends she is staying with do not have AC. Then, just to complete her travel experience she ate some bad food and got the runs. Now she is touring the Pay Toilets of Paris. I don't think there's a song about that.

That Handwriting Meme

This is my scrawl, lol. I used to have lovely handwriting but it turned into this!


And this is Tom's. Doesn't he have nice, macsuline handwriting?

What's So Effing Great About Pizza?

Saturday night we had a power outage, probably a brownout kind of thing because it was 100 freaking degrees.

Power outages totally freak out my son with autism. He doesn't understand them and goes into high stress mode. So power out was a four-plus hour crisis. Anyway, his biggest worry was that we couldn't turn on the oven and make him a (frozen) pizza, his traditional Saturday night supper.

So about 8:30 p.m. I decided that I had to take him somewhere with power and buy pizza. I also invited the DD and her BF since they were here. We went to a place called Carbone's.

Now you know I don't much like pizza. It is probably number 473 on my list of things I like to eat. And Carbone's? Had a menu of pizza, pizza, and more pizza. They also had calzones (stealth pizza) & meatballs & stuff like that. (I have gotten their Caesar Salad before and it sucks--wilted romaine & too-sweet dressing, a few croutons and nothing else.) So I was resigned to pizza. They had a chicken Alfredo pizz on the menu and DD and I wanted to share a small one of those! - but of course they were didn't actually make it anymore. We finally got a Hawaiian Pizza, pineapple and Canadian Bacon. It was (meh) okay.

Why does everyone but me love pizza!

Oh yeah, the whole time we were in the restaurant DS was still way stressed. He has an extremely loud, deep voice and he kept saying the same thing over & over, at full volume. "Fingers crossed!!! When we get power on then we can have heat on, OKAY?!?!?!" Over & over & over again. I'm sure people in the restaurant thought we were nuts. It's one hundred freaking degrees outside and we can't wait to turn the heat on! ("Heat" is DS's shorthand for 'turn on the oven'.)

New Kitten Pics

She won't hold still & pose, lol!





She has kind of a pointy face, and slanty little eyes. Very different from Tippy who has a flatter face and big round eyes.

Emergency! Need Cat Names Right Now!

We just got a new kitty! Grey female, 15 weeks, with white mittens in front, white to the hocks in back, white under-chin and a white blaze on her belly. Nose is delicately lined with darker grey, tail is slightly darked grey. No tabbie stripes at all - clear, smooth grey.


*off to Google cat names*

True Confessions

I have been having such a good time reading about the Niagara Peep Meet and I feel bad about not being there, especially since I was in Niagara just 2 weeks previously. I have said (and it is true) that the first 2 weeks of July (and the first 2 weeks of January - but that's irrelevant) are the busiest time for my home business. I just couldn't go away knowing that Tom would have to work about 30 hours over the weekend I was gone just to keep things current.

But the main reason was - Niagara is way too close to my sister Carole. You have probably guessed from reading my blog that we have a delicate & complicated relationship, my sister and I. If Carole knew I had online friends close to her and right in her own city she would spare no effort to find them and befriend them, and would eventually wind up reading my blog.

I know this would happen because even though she can be an idiot, Carole is a charming, canny idiot. Her bubbly blonde, social butterfly personna serves her well. People like her. And she is basically a good person, but since childhood she has been insanely jealous of me. We have a long history of her messing with me and she is hyper-sensitive to any hint of criticism from me.

If she knew just one person's real first name and/or place of work or something, she would be off on a quest to scope them out. (She knows your city very well, Seana - she has lots of friends there and she would find you, lol.) (She lives in your town, Meemo.) She wouldn't do anything to you, the people she found, but if she found and read my blog I would have to exit blogworld and kill the Swami. I don't want to do that. I like it here. So no Niagara peep meet for me.

I'll go to Chicago, I'll go to LA, I'll even go to Texas for a peep meet - but not Niagara. Too hard; too complicated.

Hot, Thirsty, Must Have Water!

*Crawls across a barren desert, gasping for water*

This is what my trees are saying today. We are so dry and temps in the 90s are forecast all week, along with zero precipitation. You know it's dry when you have to water your trees.

We have a border of hemlock trees on two sides of our property that I just treasure because it shields me from my least-liked neighbour and her loud-mouthed family. These trees must never die or become the slightest bit thin of needles. I will water day and night to prevent this.

I have to connect my four longest hoses to reach the far corner of the hemlock border. This is lot of hose hauling, but worth every grunt.

Am I Nuts? And a shopping list.

In the House of Swami, all fruits and vegetables are washed with soap and water before they are eaten. Exceptions: Strawberries get briefly soaked and then swished thru vinegar; iceberg lettuce & cabbage lose the outer most 2-3 layers of leaves; romaine lettuce loses outer leaves & gets exposed leaf tips cut off; loose leaf stuff like fresh spinach is a problem--hard to rinse the soap off so for those only I cross my fingers and do the cold water swish. Everything else gets a nice bubbly bath.

I have been told this is excessive and most people just rinse produce under cold running water for a few minutes. Is that true? What do you do? Do you eat that 'ready to eat' salad mixture straight from the bag? Do you know where it's been?

Also I thought I would put up the list of misc things I am going into town for shortly:
-table-top ironing board (I threw away my big one years ago)
-mesh trash cans, black, 2
-3-piece non-stick cooking set with lid, on sale for 14.99. Mostly I want the glass lid which costs almost that much by itself!
-spiral mesh hamper for the DD
-heavy weight hangers
-sea grass office cubes, 2 to 4
-sea grass wall-covering for some storage boxes to help them 'blend in' lol
-Krylon spray paint for plastic, black
-81 grain aspirin
-panti liners
-cauliflower
-dip
-dietrite
-sesame oil
-frozen pizza (for kids, not me--blecch!)

Now that gas is $3.00+ per gallon I thought I would economise a little and go to multiple stores in the same trip.

I Have Deep, Sexy, Sultry Voice.

And I feel like talking dirty.

This is the only good thing to come from a summer cold. So. How you doin'?

*cough*
*cough*

My Hair is Finally Recovering

While at the sister's house, I inadvertantly washed my hair with dog shampoo. It went like this:

When I travel to a close relative's place I often don't bring my own shampoos & conditioners because the bottles are so large, I hate packing liquid anything, etc. etc., plus I know I can either find something in the house to use or run out and buy something. Why haul big bottles unnecessarily?

So the first day at sister's house I casually look over her selection. She has a bunch of bottles on her tub surround shelves--Johnson's baby shampoo, Dove facial wash, Citre Shine conditioner & Avon body wash on one shelf, Tresemme (Sp?) shampoo and some conditioner I don't recognize on a lower shelf. I ask sister if I can use her products. She says "Oh sure. You can use anything in there!"

So I wash my hair with the Tresemme, which I vaguely remember as being okay and use the Citre Shine conditioner. Instant frizz! My hair has never been so dry! I think maybe she has weird water. I put on a bunch of my Aveda finishing cream (which I did bring because it is small & a cream.) Still frizz city. I put on a bunch of some Citre Shine hair finisher Carole has. Slightly better but still I am frizzed up like the the Bride of Frankenstein.

Two days later I wash my hair there again--same thing, Tresemme & Citre Shine. Frizz. I need a whole handful of my Aveda finishing cream to make a difference! Usually I use barely a quarter of a teaspoon and that's plenty.

So later that day I look more closely at her products because something is very wrong here. I check & smell each product. The Tresemme and un-used conditioner I check last because they are on the lower shelf. The Tresemme smells pleasant enough, but I am not familiar with how it should smell. I pick up the bottle of conditioner and finally read the entire label. It is a dog hair conditioner!

I do a brief, lonely, freak-out in the sister's bathroom because I have finally figured it out. Stupid sister put dog shampoo into a Tresemme bottle because it has a nice pump dispenser with the bottle! I've been washing my hair with with dog shampoo!!!

I decide to not even tell stupid sister what has happened because she would turn the whole thing into a "why my sister is an idiot" story and tell every single person she knew how her visiting sister used the dog shampoo on her hair!

Stupid sister. "Go ahead and use anything in there" she says. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

My Seven Things Meme.

I was tagged by Meemo, who was tagged by HD. Meemo tagged me while I was on vacation, so I will do it while he is busy with the Niagara peep meet!

Seven Things To Do Before I Die
1. Acquire enough money to provide for my autistic son’s entire future life.
2. Drive the coastal highways of every continent in the world.
3. Have one perfect vacation with Tom, probably in New Zealand.
4. Have a full body suck, tuck & enhance so I look like the perfect combination of Keira Knightly and Angelina Jolie, lol. (Note to self: do this before my perfect vacation!)
5. Own and ride a beautiful stallion, probably a Friesian. I love big horses, and since they’re cold bloods I could probably handle a Friesian stallion.
6. Learn to play the piano
7. Sky dive, which would probably kill me so it makes a good number 7.

Seven Things I Cannot Do
1. Lose weight and keep it off. I can lose it, but it creeps back so easily!
2. Stay out of bookstores.
3. Stay offline.
4. Excel in any team sport. Prolly volleyball was my best sport.
5. Make friends easily.
6. Good, cabinet-maker quality carpentry.
7. Think of a number seven.

Seven Things I Say
1. Fuck! (But not in public.)
2. Goddam MF-ing asshole! (But not in public.)
3. (In Public) Excuse me.
4. I didn’t do it yet.
5. But don’t worry, I’ll get it done.
6. Is DD here?
7. I love you (Mostly to Tom, but also my kids)

Seven Movies I Have Loved
1. The Shawshank Redemption
2. Air Force One
3. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
4. Ben Hur
5. The Wizard of Oz
6. Rosemary’s Baby
7. Laura

Seven Books I Have Loved (a very random list.)
1. The Stand, by King
2. Styx, by I forget (lol)
3. Hamlet, by Shakespeare (I know it’s not really a book, but I read it years before I ever saw it so I say it counts!)
4. Lord of the Flies by Wm Golding
5. How Green Was My Valley by Graham Greene
6. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
7. Intensity, by Dean R Koontz.

Seven Things I Love About My Mate.
1. That he loves me.
2. His wonderful personality
3. His hands, lol.
4. All his other body parts too.
5. The way he consciously tries, so hard & so well, to be a good father, a good husband and a good man.
6. That he can walk out the front door and earn big bucks, thus enabling our comfortable lifestyle.
7. That he came with a tool box and he can build and/or fix stuff I can’t.

While I Was Gone

Tom started a folder for me called "While You Were Out" which he always does. I think it is so sweet because he logs everything that happened, including any POA notices received, prints of emails he thinks are important, stuff like that. Even thought I know I does it (in part) so I won't cross-examine him so intently when I do get back - still, it's very sweet.

Some of the highlights this year:
--Hit unknown object in river, punch a hole in boat
--Make it to shore minutes before boat sinks, haul bow up into weeds, watch rest of boat go under
--Walk home
--Hire tow truck guy to drive as close to rough shore as he can and stretch 2 huge cables down to haul boat out of water, let it drain, then drag it up onto trailer.
(We both have wanted a new boat for the past couple of years. I told him he should have just let it sink and then swim ashore, but in the moment of crisis he didn't think of that.)
--DD was asked to clean house gutters. She did this without a ladder by climbing up the lowest part of the porch roof, walking and climbing to the second story level, then bending over at the edge of the roof and scooping stuff out by hand! I would have killed her had I been home! She was supposed to haul out the big extension ladder, where she would have been safely perched--but no! Miss Lazy-bones just stands on the edge of the roof and bends over. Why are the young so foolish?
--The cat died, our 20 y.o. dowager cat. I thought she might because she seemed to be failing badly as I left. Still, I regret not being there to bury her. This is the last photo of her, taken during what turned out to be her last bath in late June.

Apart from the above, everything went swimmingly while I was out. Pun intended.

Excuse Me While I Primal Scream. (Because no one can yank your chain like family)

AAARRRGGHHYAAAAAH!!!
Sorry. Thank you.

Overall I had a nice visit with the sister. Physically, she seems pretty much the same as the last time I saw her a couple of years ago. Emotionally, she is pretty much a whack job. She is just not very tightly wrapped, my sister. When you least expect it she’ll say the oddest things.

This is my sister who has had four nasty, bad marriages and four nasty, back-stabby divorces. This cannot be good for your soul or your mental health. I have no idea why she married these jerks. (Except for hubbie #1 would have avoided knowing any of the others. Tom thought the last three were scum too.) (He never met #1.) Anyway, with each divorce she lost her current property—big house/horse ranch/hobby farm/regular house—moving down the economic food chain with each failed marriage. In fact, in her last relationship she managed to lose two houses because she sold a duplex that was her ultimate back-up retirement plan and plowed that money into her marriage to “prove her love.” So now she is living in (yet another) new house trying to get by on disability but cashing in about 10Gs of CDs each year because the pension just isn’t enough to live on. I sincerely hope she doesn’t lose this house because her money is just about gone and I don’t think she could afford to buy another house.

We played cards. We visited long-time family friends. I met some of her new friends.

Sister has become a Christian and most of her new friends are part of a church group. This has been very good for her. She belongs to a churchy “family” and feels needed and involved—all important things. I hope she can stick with this church and not just burn through it. I told Tom that since now she a Bride of Christ perhaps she won’t feel such a burning need to get married again.

Anyway, sister feels bereft and insecure. She has lost much. She is so nostalgic for our childhood. She is also very insecure in her memories of that childhood. She often says “We had such exceptional parents. How could anyone live up to them!?”

I should also mention that nothing is ever sister’s fault. Other people make her do things. While talking she constantly refers to the people who mistreated her, stole from her or made her do stupid things. Usually they are called Hubbie1, Hubbie2, etc., especially Hubbies 1 and 3. But in stories of her lost childhood I am the villain.

For instance, while I was there we gave some old photos to our local town museum. While we are in there chatting with the curator Sister suddenly accuses me of stealing her high school yearbook from the attic! “It was in my box of stuff, clearly labeled ‘save for sister’ while I was living in Australia for a couple of years. You must have taken it and now those memories are lost to me!”

I am baffled, but know that I can’t just let this pass because I don’t want to have stupid disagreement in front of strangers. If I let her comment pass, then it will become a True Fact in her mind. So I say “No. Why would I take your high school yearbook? Besides, I was living in India then so I couldn’t have.” Sister starts to babble about who else could have done it and on & on while the bemused museum curator looks on. I felt like such an idiot.

Sister is still mad at me for “selling” her bicycle forty-odd years ago. She was married to hubbie1 then and hadn’t ridden it for a few years. Mom gave it to my geography teacher who was going on a two-year teaching mission to Africa. This was a good thing, IMO, but evidently my fault because it was my teacher and now her bike is gone. How can sister still be hung up on this?

It is hard to look at old family photos with sister because she gets miffed or angry over missing childhood artifacts and the people who tricked her out of them. It’s sad, really.

Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with a litany of pathetic complaints. Let’s just say it is good to be home. There is no place like home! And now I am off to do some catch-up reading. I may add twisted sister stories as they come to me.