WIP Friday and borderline sanity issues.

It's too soon.  I'm not ready to for it to be Friday.  I didn't get enough stitching done. 

Oh well, here's my progress on Call of the Wild for the week. 

Not even remotely close to as much as I'd like to have shown off, but what can ya do?  Now it's time to get back to the little Christmas Garfield project.  I'll finish that one this week even if I have to disconnect every clock in the house at 11:50pm Thursday night.

I can just see Steve trying to explain to his superiors that he was late to work because his wife wasn't done with a stitching project on time.  "Riiigghhhht.  We'll see you at Mental Health first thing in the morning."

Speaking of.  Steve I mean.  Not mental health.  Hey, let's get one thing straight right now:  I do NOT suffer from insanity.

I enjoy every second of it.

*cough*

ANYWAY!

Steve got home last night!  Yay!  He was only gone for four days, but it still felt like forever for me.  We've been through enough deployments over the last 5 years that I'm of the firm belief that we have filled our quota of "alone time" for the rest of our lives.  Every time they send him somewhere, even stateside, it feels like they're stealing time they're no longer entitled to and I begrudge them of that.  I know all you other military spouses feel the same way.

If I want time away from my husband I can go upstairs or turn on a television show I want to watch.  Nothing will clear that man out of the room faster than hearing one of my forensic shows firing up.  Muwhahahahaaaaa!

This morning I was taking the trash out and I spotted my friend Rona out with her dogs.  She was about as awake as I was, so of course I trekked across the street so we could revel in the fact that we each looked like we'd just stuck our fingers in a light socket.  After we finished giggling at each other, she pointed at Steve's car and mentioned that she was glad to see he was home.

"Yeah.  He got home last night."  *yawn*  "Sorry, I'm tired."

...

I hope our laughter didn't wake any of the neighbors...

Cats are always so regal and dignified.

And if you believe that, you've just betrayed yourself as someone who has never owned a cat in your life.  Ever.

*cough*

My cats are awesome.  At least I think so.  Steve tolerates them because it's easier to put up with them than to deal with that whole "Hell hath no fury like a woman whose beloved furry speedbumps have mysteriously vanished off the face of the planet" thing.  But as cool as they are, "regal" and "dignified" could never be included in any list of adjectives that might be applied to Cali and Lea.

Cali has no interest in dignity.  Dignity would mean that she couldn't follow me around the house howling and hollering every fourth step until I picked a spot to sit down in so she could immediately invade and flop onto her back demanding a tummy rub.  If I fail to provide the appropriate attentions, she makes it abundantly clear that my priorities need to be straightened out.


"Put down the camera and rub the belly.  Now."



"No bellyrub; no stitching."





Lea has never been regal, despite being named because she had the potential to look like a lion when she was a kitten.  Oh she THINKS she's regal.  But any creature that consistantly falls asleep looking like she's been thrown out of a moving vehicle is automatically disqualified.


Backbones are totally overrated.



Okay, so bones in general are overrated.












From what I've been told about dogs, when an owner calls a dog, chances are that dog will get up and come to the owner to see what reward is waiting.

When an owner calls a cat, that cat will generally look up in irritation and make it clear that she will answer when the continental drift gets to wherever said owner is standing.

My cats are no exception to this feline rule of thumb.  Even when they do deign me worthy of getting up and inspecting whatever I might be offering they do it slowly, taking care to ensure that I'm fully aware of the fact that despite being the one who is "in charge" I'm really on THEIR schedule.

Today, both girls were sprawled at the foot of my bed diligently depositing liberal amounts of fur all over the sheets when I made the mistake of opening a canister on the other end of the house.  I heard and felt the dull roar of a speeding locomotive bearing down on me and barely had enough time to scramble out of the way before a fuzzy boxing match broke out where I'd just been standing.

Gimme gimme gimmegimmegimmegimmegimme......

Mmmm..... My Preciousssss

Right now, my two darlings are racing each other up and down the stairs, and up and down the stairs, and ACK! WHAT'S THAT?? Oh it's my shadow, and up and down the stairs, and doh! missed a couple of steps there, and up and down the stairs, and up and down the stairs, and hey! no fair biting my tail!, and up and down the stairs, and up and down.....

Ahhh.  Catnip.

So Steve's out of town again and Sarah started school today, which means it's just me and the rugrats at home.  Piece of cake, right?

*cough*

Sarah spent all day yesterday with a friend at a wave pool.  By the time I was called to come collect my daughter, it was nearing sunset and she bore a striking resemblance to a boiled lobster.  It was actually rather difficult to resist the urge to waltz up to her and smack her across the back of her shoulders just to see the stark white handprint that would have been left there.  Apparently she figured that picking up the bottle of sunblock and reading the directions would have the same effect as actually APPLYING the sunblock.   After the 25 minute drive home I was stunned to see that her skin was even redder and threatening to start going purple. 

When I tried to put aloe vera on her I quite literally burned my own fingers, so I chased her into the bathroom for what she said was her second cold shower hoping that would it ease some of the heat radiating off of her skin.  But when she came out of the shower sobbing in agony and complaining about a headache that was moving down her neck, it was time to beg the neighbor to watch the littles while I dosed Sarah with pain meds and we made a beeline for the ER in the middle of the night.

Four hours later we were back home, Sarah was slathered in a green aloe vera cocoon and trying to sleep on her stomach, and Cali was standing over her with her nose twitching in fast forward and a look of "Eww, what IS that??".  Every few seconds or so Cali would carefully lift a paw, delicately poke at Sarah's back, and snuffle her paw. I assume she repeated the process until Sarah lost her patience and suddenly exploded into rather loud writhing which sent Cali scrambling into my room with every hair standing on end.

Where was I?  I was laying in my bed and staring at the ceiling wondering why this sort of stuff never seems to happen when Steve is home to enjoy it with me.

*mutter*

And what have Heather and Hunter been doing for their entertainment?

Well, Hunter decided to see if he could climb the curtains in his room, provided the anchors holding the curtain rod in place on the wall were strong enough to hold him.

He could.  They weren't. 
Hunter bounced.  The curtain rod (and chunks of the wall) didn't.

*twitch*

It turns out Heather decided her stuffed animals needed a bath in the bathroom sink upstairs while I was doing laundry downstairs.  My first clue things were not as I had left them was Heather running down the stairs and racing down the hallway past me screaming "Why does this always happen to me? What's wrong with the world??"

Arurr? 

As I stood there trying to remember what she might have watched recently that had those lines in it, Hunter zipped past me leaving a trail of soggy footprints and wailing "They're drowning!  They can't swim!  We have to help them!"

erm...

They were only alone for ten minutes.  How much damage could they have possibly done?!?  Oh wait... Curtain rod.  Chunks of plaster.  Holes in wall.

*whimper*

I raced upstairs to find the bathroom sink overflowing as it appeared Hunter failed to turn the water off before bolting after his sister.  Bobbing up and down in the basin were the obviously swimming-challenged corpses of several stuffed animals. 

Why didn't the water drain through that hole at the top of the sink designed to prevent kid-made waterfalls?  The stuffed snake with its tail crammed into said hole might have something to do with that.

*TWITCH!*

I'm beginning to wonder if Steve is somehow figuring out ahead of time what the kids are plotting and making himself conveniently scarce.

Concert Night!!

Yeah, I know.  It's been 3 days since my last blog.  As most of you already know, I got the phone call that my Grandma passed yesterday, so it's been a bit of a challenge staying positive enough to make fun of the people around me.  Wait... that came out wrong.

If there was anyone in the world who could make you smile just by walking into the room, it was Grandma.  She was amazing.  I never saw her be anything but loving to everyone she ever came  into contact with and she was easily a bigger kid than any of us grandchildren.  And that's going some... I think I got a fair amount of my screwballness from her and I'll be forever grateful for it! 

For example, when I was about 7 we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa and ended up at the grocery store.  At some point I threw a temper tantrum when Mom said I couldn't have some treat or something.  Mom rolled her eyes and pointedly ignored me, Dad threatened my life as soon as we were someplace that didn't have witnesses, Grandpa shot Dad a "Better you than me" grin, and Grandma calmly sat down in the middle of the aisle.

...and threw a knockdown, dragout, feet kicking, arms flailing, top of her lungs temper tantrum right there on the floor.  Once she had drawn a sufficient crowd of people with jaws hanging slack, she abruptly stopped howling, stood up, smiled sweetly at everyone and asked if I thought I'd looked any less ridiculous.

I never threw another fit of any kind.  And she became my role model.  Which probably explains alot, actually.

She's definitely going to be missed, but if she caught me wallowing in misery I'm sure I'd get an earful and I'm not about to find out how big a temper tantrum a ghost can churn up. 

Well, today's Sunday and as always that means we're busy busy busy from 6am to sometime around midnight.  And tonight was a concert by the Katinas.  It was an amazing show and very moving!  I can't wait until they come back again.

I had originally intended to stay home because a concert with two small children in tow is rarely any fun, but they both insisted they wanted to go to church.  So, they went.  Steve works in the AV department which means we had to be there at least an hour before start time.  Sarah was meeting a friend at the concert with plans to go home with her family for a sleepover.  Just me and the rugrats until the show began. Yay.  Bored children.  For an hour.

*twitch*

"When's it going to start?" "I want to hear the music!" "Can we go get something to eat?" "I'm bored." "Mom, where's your word game?" (Kindle) "Why won't Daddy let us play in the spotlights?" "Is it starting soon?"

I wanna go home...

Finally it was time to begin and the lights went down.  There were two performers before the Katinas took the stage and throughout the duration of each of them, I was unable to really pay attention because I was dealing with a litany of "Is that them?" "When do we get to hear them?" "Isn't it starting yet?" "Where are they?"

Heather refused to sit still and started trying to run laps back and forth past the stage.  I discovered it was rather difficult to keep up with her with Hunter in my arms sabotaging any attempts to grab at her, so I plopped him in my seat and said firmly, "Stay put."  Yeah. Right.  Fortunately, a really great friend who was sitting behind us reached out and nabbed Hunter so I could go retrieve my daughter who was now quite happily trying to her darndest to steal all attention from B. Reith as he performed his last song for the evening.

Once I'd caught the girlchild and planted her back in our seats, it was time for the Katinas to come out and sing.  There was cheering, shouting, clapping, singing along, drums, keyboards, guitar, and great vocals.   Lots of people jumped up to dance to the music.  I thoroughly enjoyed their first song and turned to Heather and Hunter to see what they thought of the group they'd been fussing and nagging about wanting to hear.

Heather was sprawled out across four seats and fascinated with the lights in the ceiling.
Hunter was comfortably snoring in Tanya's arms.

Ermm... I suppose everyone enjoys concerts in their own way?

Peace is overrated...

or obsolete. or pointless. or passively aggressive.

Depends on who you're dealing with I suppose.

For example:

This morning, little Hunter shouted at me from the bathroom "Mommy!  I'm making bubbles! Come look!"  I bolted into the bathroom fully expecting to see my child up to his knees in bubble bath. It didn't dawn on me that I never heard any water running until I rounded the corner and found the child standing on the toilet seat (with remarkably good balance, I might add) peeing into the water and getting the biggest kick out of the bubbles that kept appearing in the bowl.

Well, at least I don't need to spend money on Christmas gifts this year...


This afternoon, Sarah was taken to a friend's beauty shop to get her hair cut for school.  When she was all done and Crystal asked her if she liked it, Sarah tilted her head back and forth and kind of mumbled a little bit to herself before saying that no, she didn't really like it.  She got up and shook her hair out, then very carefully put it back EXACTLY the way Crystal had styled it and turned to us with a grin.  "That's better."

Crystal and I just looked at each other and silently took bets on which of us could kill the girl first.


Afterwards, it was time to make a quick jaunt to the store because I'd seen an advertisement for something called Granola Thins from Nature Valley and anything claiming to be healthy while having dark chocolate slathered on it is going to be purchased by me.  I told the kids that if they behaved themselves, I'd consider stopping at Dairy Queen before going home as a treat.  Heather promptly started grabbing everything on the shelves she could reach while reciting a steady monolog of "Can I have this? Can you buy me this? I want this. This looks good. Can we get this?" followed by miniature temper tantrums each time I said "No." and put said item back.  After 5 straight minutes of this, she finally let out a screech that made people around us jump out of their skin and demanded a box of cookies.  It was Hunter who turned on her with "We already have cookies at home, Heather!"  (What can I say?  The boy was faster than I was.)

I snarled out, "Why are you acting like this?!?" Heather calmly glared up at me and said as matter of factly as you could want, "Because I want ice cream!"

*twitch*


Well, now I'm home, sans ice cream, and had been looking forward to a quiet evening of the kids being exiled to their playroom while I spent some time on the internet relaxing before going to cross stitch.  My favorite message board was the first place I went to visit.  Usually I'm rather adept at avoiding the threads that are ticking down to their own little armageddons.

Today...  errm... not so lucky.  

Someone upset someone, who went to someone else, who charged in with blaring trumpets and upset a whole lot of someone elses, who brought in reinforcements, who called in more cavalry, who discovered the battlefield simply wasn't big enough and claimed more ground, which caught the attention of still more someone elses, who ....

I'd get popcorn and sack out to watch, but these gals would give a maximum security prison population a run for their money and I'm just not that interested in being a guinea pig for amatuer acupuncture.

Think I'll go take my chances with the 4 year old and her temper tantrums.

wait... I hear water running.  Oh no.  They've made a swimming pool for the Care Bears again.  The PLUSH Care Bears.

*twitch twitch twitch twitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitchtwitch*

Somedays just suck all around...

Today hasn't been the greatest day for me so I'm having a hard time finding something to make fun of.

I suppose I could poke fun at the hard working roofers across the street at our neighbor's home, but it got over 100° again and quite honestly I'm fairly amazed I didn't see them taking turns slip sliding down the steep grade of her house in a desperate attempt to find some moving air of any kind.  Although I suppose trying to create waterslides on the roof wouldn't be overly effective when the water boils into steam on contact...

I could try to squeeze a little giggle out of the fact that I made Sarah put her movie in upstairs so it wouldn't disturb my stitching downstairs, and then found myself staring at the closing credits of said movie 90 minutes later while Lea happily burrowed into my cross stitching thread and shed all over my project. 

Or I could mention how Steve called me on his way home like he always does, then my Dad called me, and I managed to hang up on BOTH of them while trying to answer the calls.  Twice.  I swear that blasted phone snickered at me while I sheepishly called each of them back and tried to explain that I really wasn't a complete moron.

Then there was my doctor's appointment to draw a skin sample for a biopsy. After the "little bee sting" prick of the needle and the lovely sensation of Lidocaine systematically searing any and all unfortunate nerve endings within reach to a burned out husk, I was in the oh-so-dignified position of lying flat on my back with a less than flattering portion of my body being sliced into while my doctor did her best to help me feel a little less like a test subject in a mad scientist's laboratory.

That wasn't nearly as entertaining as it was to discover, after I was already driving home, that apparently I don't react to Lidocaine like most people are supposed to.  I spent the entire 30 min drive home praying that everyone else on the road was also suffering a delay between their brain issuing a command and their body getting around to recognizing and following through on said command.  My children were a smidgeon alarmed when I came through the door, shuffled straight to my bed, and collapsed face first into my pillow. 

At least, they were alarmed enough to follow me into my room, stare at me for a second, take turns poking at me until I growled at them, and then go back into the livingroom to finish watching their show.

*twitch*

Like I said...  Today just hasn't offered up much to muse about.

Insert clever title here.

It's Monday.  Normally I'd pull a Garfield and glare out the window muttering sweet insults about the first day of the work week since I'm one of those clingy wives who absolutely hates having her husband gone, even if it's only for a typical workday.  But last week was nonstop running around, followed by a payday weekend with a ton of errands on Saturday and a particularly busy day at church on Sunday.

Today it's gonna take a crowbar and a wheelbarrow to get me off my backside.  Or maybe a couple loads of laundry.  *mutter*  But at least I don't have to leave the house. 

Yesterday was our church's Christmas in July celebration for soldiers who were deployed this past Christmas.  We were to dress as if it was a frigid winter night and after the gift giving, there was hot chocolate and cookies in the gymnasium.  I believe the high temperature yesterday was 97°, but on Christmas you have hot chocolate and cookies, so that's what we did.  I'm told it was a big success! 

I spent the evening in the kitchen unwrapping cookies and setting up hundreds of cups of hot cocoa while Heather and Hunter did their all out best to trip up Sarah, me, the lady I consider to be in charge of kitchen volunteer stuff, and the two gals that got ambushed when we discovered there were ALOT more people in attendance than we'd anticipated.

We managed to get the cookies and cocoa cups ready in time, if only with seconds to spare.  A few minutes later there was a panicked "We're out?  Really?!?"  Of course, the first thought that came to my head was that somehow my children had attacked and wiped out 1,000 cookies all by themselves in under 4 seconds when we weren't looking.  Then I realized that they were right behind me and innocent for a change, even if they were cranky for not getting such an opportunity.

So what could we possibly be out of that would cause chaos when all we're serving is cookies and hot cocoa?

You guessed it.  No hot water.  *twitch*  Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you feel like you've been basted in tangy BBQ sauce and dropped in the middle of a room full of half-starved wolves?

So we commandeered a couple more volunteers who found themselves running pitchers of scalding hot water from every coffeemaker in the building back to the kitchen where three of us were frantically pouring and stirring as fast as we could manage.  No worries!  We've got it all under control!!  No, really!  Why are you looking at me like that?

All in all, it was a fun evening that of course flew by because we were kept so busy for the entire duration.  But next year when we do this, I think we should scrap the hot cocoa idea.  Instead, we can have chocolate milkshakes made to look like mugs of hot cocoa.

Assuming I don't eat all the ice cream when no one else is looking......