:-) s and :-( s on a Friday

:( This is month end, so Tom will be home rather late. He has to stay at the bank until he is sure Treasury can balance then he leaves and the minions finsh up. Only once did he have to turn around on the way home and go back to straighten something out.

:) He always buys dine-in meals for his staff at month end (so they can just work right thru dinner), and orders enough to bring me home a nice late dinner too! I wonder what it will be tonight?

:( Tom is sad that I don't talk enough about how wonderful, sexy, quirky and entertaining he is in this blog.

:) Tom was very wakeful at 3:45 am.

:( Swami needs a new knee. I have both inflammatory arthritis and osteoarthritis and my left knee (the one I twist everytime I twist a knee) has gone whack. So I saw my doctors and was referred to a surgeon. They are going to work me into their schedule soon, but I don't have a date yet. Probably soon. This may effect a couple of trips I had planned - which makes me mad - but if I am going to do it then I want to do it so I am well recovered by Thanksgiving and snow season.

:) Everyone who has had this surgery sings its praises, so I am looking forward to getting a very improved knee!

:) Birds are flocking, which means Fall is here. I love Fall - it's my favorite season. Yesterday I saw 5 or 6 Bald Eagles hanging around a bend in the river favored by geese. I think the eagles are there for the fish, not the geese, but I imagine the geese are pretty nervous.

:( Speaking of birds reminds me of MM. When did her blog go invitation only? How am I supposed to get my daily smut? Can someone please ask her to invite me if she wishes to?

:) I have 4 steps going up to my front porch with a small, polished cast iron railing down one side. A flock of chickadees just tried to land on it, and they all slid down and off the end one by one. A couple flew to the top and tried to sit on it again. I could see them looking down and trying to figure out why their feet couldn't grip. Wheeee! Down the slide they went. Silly birds.

:( My dishwasher is in it's deaththroes. I have to manually reconnect the upper spray arm before every use. Which means...

:) I am getting a new dishwasher! Yay! I want a Bosch, probably their 300 or 500 series. So I am off to Warner's Stellian to check out all the models, kick the tires, stuff like that. I am looking forward to a nice quiet machine. My current one is way too loud.

So, who wants to give me a :) and a :( from their life this week?

Visit Almost Over

Quick pix.


This is grandson and my middle daughter (not his mom!) at Mall of America, posing with some drugged parrots. I can think of no other reason why these birds would willingly sit on the shoulders of strangers and then, when the photographer said "look at the camera", the birds looked at the camera!


This is grandson in his Aladdin costume, from a dance recital I blogged about a while back. Isn't he the perfect Aladdin!


Grandson in his superhero outfit. He IS a superhero, so the 'K' is for his first name.

And I can't find the other two photos I thought I uploaded. Darn! His mom is gorgeous but she kept hiding from the camera so I had to get her in
the background of another grandson pic. Now I guess I have to load the photo again. Don't know when I'll do that...

MIA for a while

My daughters (and only grandchild!) will arrive from NY sometime tomorrow and I am in the home stretch of undustifying my house. (Eldest has many allergies.) So - if anyone would like to inspect my closets, look under sofa cushions or eat off my kitchen floor, then today is your day.

I expect I will be too distracted to make blog rolls much for the next 10 days or so. You all have fun now - hear?

~closed for fumigation~

This blog is temporarily closed for fumigation. Please ignore the good-looking, bare-chested men in cheese hats. They are trained professionals fulfilling a contract. Thank you.

--management

Filling in for Weltek

I have cheese!

Marieke Gouda with Stinging Nettle, and another Gouda with Cumin seed. Cumin flavored cheese has long been a favorite of mine, but I love this Stinging Nettle cheese! Delicious! It has abundant, tiny bits of green nettle leaves all through it. I hate stinging nettle in my garden but dang it makes a nice cheese!

Probably all Weltek will have after her marathon walk is toe cheese.

This morning I am off to the doctor so she can look at my knee. I hate getting old.

Helga the Hygienist

Helga the Hygienist is alive and well. She hurted me. Poked a hole in my gums and then announced that I had a "pocket on 15". Of course I do, bitch. You just made it so! She has also started to mumble a lot and give weird little laughs now and then. At least I don't have to try and converse since my mouth is full of her hands and assorted sharp things.

*runs tongue over slickery teeth*

Updatey Stuff

1. Middle child has gone to NY to visit her sister and help her paint their house. NY daughter bought a beat-up Victorian a few years ago and has finally finished rebuilding the front porch, which triggered the paint job. Never a person for New England White houses, she is painting hers like an Alamo Square Painted Lady. House is a funky green and the railings, trim and assorted Victorian fancy stuff will be in shades of mustard and red with copper wherever they can afford it. Sounds gaudy, but older DD has an excellent color sense so I am sure it will all “work” and be lovely.

2. Guess who had to get up at 3 a.m. to get daughter to the airport for her 5:25 a.m. flight? Good ol’ mom, or course. Which is how I found out that our local McDonald’s has free coffee between 5 and 7 a.m. Who knew?

3. I am still entertained by watching fussy British ladies smell dirty toilets. Also? There a lot of very dirty eccentrics in England.

4. My cleaning binge has morphed into the Great Closet Clean-Out of ’07. I am sending a whole carload of stuff to the farm, where Tom’s mom gives it to her church for their semi-annual thrift sale. Evidently I have been hoarding coats. I will send 11 winter coats (all adult sizes)!

5. Bridge news. They are replacing our 8 lane collapsed bridge with a 10-lane bridge and rapid transit train tracks. Gov wants it done by the end of 2008. They still have the site locked down tight – no one can get near it. A few people have been arrested for sneaking past the cordoned off streets, ticketed, and threatened with one year in jail and/or a $3,000 fine for trespass. This seems rather excessive to me. They are public streets, after all. And nothing was done but attempted “looking.”

6. Hot. Dry. Repeat. I am hauling hoses again this morning.

7. I hate Evil Dick. I used to think he was entertaining but now I think he is just an uncontrolled bully. If I were Danielle I would have left home too.

8. There are 12 boxes of Fire Dept documents sitting in my front hall and I am heartily sick of them. They were hauled here in case we had to look something up on paper – which we didn’t. Now I can’t get anyone to take them back. Anyone have a truck I can borrow? And a box-carrier? Because no way am I going to try carrying the darn things.

9. In the back bottom of downstairs coat closet (yeah—I’m back on my Great Closet Clean-Out topic) I found a complete Black & Decker Scrubbing machine that I bought once and then decided was a useless piece of carp. It goes into a box of gadgets to send to the farm.

10. August is turning out to be a busy month!

Clean clean clean clean clean clean clean.

What I'm doing today, along with watching the Minnesota Bridge Collapse Show on CNN. Very shocking to see a bridge I used to drive over every day laying in the river. Very strange. We are all fine and unaffected! The St Croix is our river these days, not the Mississippi. Remember when I posted the pics of Humpty Dumpty statues? This is very close to that gallery. I think on that trip we drove under the bridge several times on a road that follows the bank of the river. We used to picnic almost under that bridge too, just a little north of it.

Anyway, I am cleaning because my oldest DD is coming for a visit in a couple of weeks. She is allergic to everything - especially dust. So the room she is going to sleep in has to be completely dismantled and every surface including the walls washed. This is the room my son uses on weekends and where I have stuffed the closet full of stored stuff. All the stuff has to come out because stuff is full of dust. So I am running all the quilts and stuff through the dryer to de-dust them, then I will bag them up. A bunch of stuff has to be hauled to the basement.

*sigh* It's nice to have her visit, but a pain to do all the cleaning. She is allergic to cats, and I have two cats.

Amazon Has Everything

I am in love with Castellana Rustic Italian Pasta - particularly their Foglie d'Autunno. Tossed with heaps of fresh basil, tomatoes, garlic & olive oil it is my favorite summer salad, hands down. So I was so bummed when my local upscale grocer stopped carrying it. I searched any number of stores around here - no Castellana.

So a couple of weeks ago I Googled for it - and Amazon was the third hit. I ordered a case of pasta from Amazon! I love Amazon, but I've never bought a food product from them before.

Last night I decided that if I didn't need fresh produce and dairy I could go totally Howard Hughes, order everything I need or want from Amazon, and never leave my house again!

If I was so inclined.
But I wouldn't save my urine in empty drink containers.
That's just crazy!