I'm still alive!

I am so sorry it's been to long since I posted!  Just life, ya know. 

I have been posting almost every day over at Maple Grove Cemetery for the Countdown to Halloween (and on Instagram for #earringoftheday) so it's not like I've been completely gone from this planet.

Finally found these!  This is a huge freakin' box. It barely fits in our cabinet!

But I also found Pumpkin Spice Life Cereal & I may have bought 4 boxes....

Well, I can pretty much say I'm ready for Halloween.  At least the cemetery is, anyway.  The inside of the house looks like a tornado stuck and I just don't know where to start.  Too much stuff is the problem. 

Daisy's expression says it all. 

A little bit of exciting - my neighbor must have been stalking me one day because she was in the driveway before I even got out of the car after work.  She told me she was having a costume party / bonfire on November 5 and asked if I could leave the cemetery up until after then?!!  Normally it comes down on Nov 1, and with Randy's help last year, it was totally down and mostly put away by dinnertime.  The only reason I said yes is because she invited us to said party / bonfire, too. But high praise, anyway! 

Still seems sort of weird - the bonfire is at her house and if people are in the backyard, they won't see the cemetery anyway!  Seems like all its good for is to use it in the directions to her house, we're on the right side of the cemetery!  Anyhoo I will put up some caution tape across the side by the driveway so people hopefully won't try to go exploring thru the cemetery - seeing it up close takes away the illusion.  Zipties & extension cords (which may or my not be under the leaves by then) & wood dowels & fence posts & blinding spotlights aren't the prettiest ~or safest~ things. 

Oh well, I can still put everything away inside!

My sister was out of town, so I went a couple mornings to take are of the horses.  I had to take Chuck the skeleton along to play (posted about that, too!!)

So life has been going.  October has been going by WAY too fast.  We had some drama with Miss Angela - She finally dumped Psycho-boy.  For good this time!  And yes there was police involvement #3 which was the final straw - he threw a hissy because she went to a haunted house after work with a bunch of co-workers without him. Big fight ensued.  She went to meet him the next day to give him some stuff back, and he proceeded to call her names and yell at her (like he always did when she did something he didn't like), so she got in the car and left.  He proceeded to chase her!  Up on her bumper, then he'd speed up & cut her off & slow down!  He threw something out the window at her car!  She called me freaking out, so Randy called 911.  We told her to pull into a public parking lot and stop and 2 patrol cars were there within seconds.  He kept going, but he didn't count on Randy being able to provide a thorough description of his car AND the license plate # to the 911 operator. When he didn't answer the calls from the lovely officer to return to this parking lot, they were easily able to just pull him over and tell him in person.  So I don't know what happened there, but when she got home, she wasn't sad or upset at all like she had been after other altercations with him.   Pretty sure she was shutting the door on that chapter then. 

I think what helped a lot is one of the guys at work is interested in her and she was seeing how much nicer it was to spend time with someone who is nice, fun & respectful! It's been 2 weeks now and she's like a different person - a much nicer person.  I think because Psycho would treat her so bad, she'd take out all of her anger at Randy & I.  This new guy is 180 different.  

Whew - that was even stressful to relive that to write about it!  So glad it's over!  Oh, he had the nerve to have one of his friends text her and ask her to unblock his number so he could tell her himself how much he missed her.  All she said was No.  So the new guy knows about this, since he was right there when she got it (I've gotten to meet him, a very nice kid.  And he's older than her!!)

The driver at work who likes to bring in pictures of his dogs in costumes (I seriously have a file in my desk dating back to 2005 labelled "Ron's Dogs"!!) and for some reason, his wife has been ordering the wrong sizes for their Golden Retrievers....so he brought this one in for Jack. 

Jack was not amused, although we were! 

Last weekend, we (Randy, Angel & I, along with my 2 sisters) went ghost hunting!  I wrote a whole post about it here.  It was a lot of fun.  Sister Laurie & I went to the same location back in July (here's the post for that), so we had an idea of places around the Mill grounds that we wanted to check out again.  But other things happened this time in different places.  And it was a pain to take pictures, since it gets dark so early now.  My phone's flash angles down and to the left so that corner is always washed out.  Pppft.  

We also did a belated 21st birthday party for my niece Lisa - her birthday was in July and for some reason we didn't do anything with her on that momentous occasion. So she wanted to do Painting With A Twist and picked out this galloping horse silhouette on a lovely sunset.  

I don't know why people thought it was was funny that I painted with one hand and hand my red cup of wine in my other......

I think we did good.  Other than a couple unicorns, a Pegasus and a random dragon, we actually followed directions!  Last time we went, the painting hostess wasn't happy when we added our own personal touches to the paintings - this girl was cool with it. 

I've been wanting to do a Halloween painting at home for some time.  I've had these canvases forever.  Angel had doodled on them and they got stuck behind her dresser and we found them last winter when she got new bedroom furniture.  I painted over her doodles and this is what I come up with!  I actually wanted to re-create the funky old gnarly cherry tree we had in our yard (and still might) but I cheated with these trees.  They're wood cut-outs that had slots where you fit them together and made a free-standing tree.  I learned a toothpick fills in the slot nicely.  3 shades of paint, some glue and other than drying time - a quick & easy little project that I really like. 

So work is fine.  I'm so glad there is only one UM / MSU college football game per year!  We were encouraged to wear our team colors yesterday (I'm different - I wore a Razorback shirt because spouse outranks boss in my book!).  The company I work for - the owner & his 3 sisters, aka department heads - are all Spartans.  Green & white all the way.  But there are a few poor saps who are Wolverines!  So whenever my boss, Michelle would come down into dispatch, she would stop at the top of the stairs and start playing the MSU fight song on her phone nice & loud - just to torture the few UM guys.  She did this every time she came into dispatch!  And I'm pretty sure she made extra trips, just for the heck of it. 

I thought it was quite hilarious and texted Randy about it and all he said was "we don't have these problems in Arkansas!"

So that's the excitement here.  Its pretty nice out today, so I think I'm going to load up the dog and go to the park down the road that has more nature-y trails than the park at the end of the street.  I'll take my camera and hopefully get some good pics.  Peak color is almost past around here - except for my maple trees out front.  Those damn things have barely begun to change color!  At the rate they're going, I'll still be raking at Thanksgiving!