Sunday, November 29, 2015

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

We got to my sister's house Wednesday evening and didn't come home until last night and I totally forgot to pre-write any blog posts!  So ...
I hope everyone had a nice, peaceful, drama-free day.  

Wednesday we got to Laurie's house just in time to let the dog into the house and then go to dinner. It was just us girls - Mom, Laurie, Linda, Angel & me.  Then we went back for some beverages & a rousing game of Scattergories. 

Thursday, one of Laurie's friends brought her horse over - she's going thru a divorce and is going to board him there until she gets back on her feet.  Kisses & Captain spent a long time chasing the new addition around.  Which is funny, Captain (the 22 year old gray) is usually really mellow & laid back.  I've never seen him act like so much of a jerk!  But they'll work out their differences eventually.  He's just defending his girl from the new guy. 
(hard to believe barely a week ago she had a foot of snow!)

I've never really gotten scared around horses before - but I did this weekend!  Thursday night, poor Z (he's part Arabian and has a weird name to reflect that - so his nickname is Z.) didn't know where he was supposed to go.  So I had to lead him to his new stall.  Friday morning, I let Kisses out first and she kept coming back into the barn so I'd shoo her out, then took Captain out.  They proceeded to block the door so I couldn't get Z out.  I'd shoo them away and he'd take a couple more steps, then Kisses came flying in with her ears back and teeth bared - and Z hid behind me! PANIC!  I confess to smacking Kisses on the nose and yelling NO for that one.  I finally got them all out and they ran around for a while before settling down.  It's going to take a few days figuring out which order they work best with.  There's been a lot of squealing & snorting & chasing going on.  I just texted Laurie and asked how they were doing and all she said was Captain is a jackass. 

Then dinner.  It was yummy.  The same stuff everyone else has - turkey, stuffing, green beans, mashed taters, BBQ little Smokies, salad, rolls, pumpkin & apple pies and a cheesecake. Laurie & I took our dogs for a walk.  Linda kept her little yappies inside.

After everyone else left, we (the same as listed above) did our annual craft.  I'd cut up a couple old pallets I had and Linda brought paints and stuff.  It was pretty fun.  You can't tell here, but I hit mine with some glitter blast so it's sparkly.
Friday night we took Laurie's kittens to the vet for shots & spaying / neutering.  Then later went to Huckleberry RR as usual for the train ride, fireworks & tree lighting.

I think this big ol' oak tree is more impressive than the regular big pine they use for the tree-lighting.
Saturday, we picked up the kittens and went into Lapeer to this antique store called Past Tense.  It's a pretty awesome store.  The entire upstairs of this old house is all Halloween stuff - so I really enjoy going up there.  I didn't enjoy the rest as much as I should have since my knee's been bothering me and makes it difficult to walk and especially do stairs.  Angel, Jack and I finally got home just after dark.  She went to go visit the boyfriend and I chilled on the couch with all the cats.  They missed us!  Daisy was like velcro to me.

This morning I happily slept in and woke up to see this.....Chester's front legs were on my thigh and Daisy snuggled into his side.  So cute!
Once I was up and around, I got the blowmolds put out into the front yard.  I'm so glad it takes less time for the Christmas yard, since I wasn't in the mood.  And I stupidly didn't check the lights before putting them out so there are 2 new ones without bulbs and several not working.  Oh well!  I'll stop on the way home tomorrow and look for some new bulbs.  It's hard to find regular 25 Watt bulbs nowadays! 

Then we took Angel's car and dropped off at the shop to hopefully fix the chugging and stalling.  We ignored the piles of turkey we brought home and had a $5 pizza for dinner instead.  Wooo! 

Ugh, back to the grind tomorrow.  I could get used to 4 day weekends all the time! 

#TFTLS

Monday, November 23, 2015

The rest of the weekend!

I broke this up into 2 posts since I actually have like real, applicable titles!

Saturday was the 2nd of our annual craft shows with Mom and my sisters.  I really didn't see much that I wanted.  I got a pair of goofy turkey earrings since I don't have any and finally got Daisy an ornament

Daisy-approved!
And I couldn't resist getting the purple reindeer!    
 I got the red one two years ago and the green one last year.  They're so stinkin' cute!
Afterward, we went to lunch and as usual, planned out who was bringing what to Laurie's house for Thanksgiving.  Randy is still in Arkansas for another week, so Angel & I will head to her house Wednesday evening.  Not sure when we'll come home yet, probably Saturday some time. 

Sunday was the 2nd annual WERK dance Intensive at Miss Angela's dance studio.  It's a full day of instruction by guest teachers and they all seem to really enjoy themselves, even if they work their little butts off.  I did take pictures again, almost 900 of them!  And since I was the photographer, I got to take as many of my own kid as I wanted!  These are my favorites. 

 Like.A.Boss!








She's really not working with another injury - the knee brace is to protect it this time.  She's come home from class several times already with big nasty bruises from floor work.  Knocking on wood, she's sound!  Altho I did take her into the doctor last week because she said she was still getting a stabbing pain in her side every so often.  Usually when she was lying on her side of sitting a certain way.  The doc ran tests as a precaution and poked & prodded her, but came to the conclusion it's her posture and she literally IS being stabbed, by her rib!  So when she sits up straight, the pain goes away.  She has no body fat as padding, so it's all on how she carries herself. 

Man, I was almost as tired as her when the day was over.  I was wearing boots that aren't good for standing / walking for 9+ hours and my knee was acting up still.  We got home and both took aspirin and laid down for a while.  After a while, Angel texted me from the living room and asked about dinner.  It was clearly something that needed to be brought to us, so I ordered pizza. 

The Friday after Thanksgiving we have tickets to Huckleberry RR for the Christmas tree lighting.  That'll be pretty fun. There will be caroling and fireworks and such.  I'm sure we'll do a craft, which means I need to go brush the snow off the old pallet fence I made for Halloween a few years ago and cut pieces so we can paint Naughty / Nice signs. I'll take a couple nutcrackers I have that need some attention, repairs and / or paint, etc.  And we'll visit and have a few adult beverages, ya know - the usual stuff. 

There's a chin on my leg and eyes burning into me, so I guess I need to go let the dog out before bed.  Later!

A rather unpleasant surprise.....

I was up way too freakin' early Sunday morning and took the dog outside at 6am.  Our yard isn't fenced, so he goes on a run that's stretched from the corner of the garage across the yard to a tree way in back.

I clipped the leash part onto his collar and stood up.  Then I wondered why the run was lying on the ground instead of pulled taut....?  I looked out across the yard (in the dim pre-dawn, snowy light) and wondered what the hell I was looking at.  I thought it was a branch in the yard.

Nope.
???????? 
(still hard to see what it is - taken at 7:15ish am)
Not a branch, but the entire 30+ foot pine tree !!!
We got over 6 inches of wet, heavy snow Saturday and that with some wind we got Saturday night apparently was too much for this tree that has been dead for several years. It snapped off about a foot up from the ground and luckily fell into the clear part of the yard.  It didn't hit the shed or weather station or any of the other trees.  Jack's run was the only casualty, whew!
 Some rather unhappy carpenter ants.  I hope the buggers froze!
So yeah - no idea what we're going to do with it.  We need to find someone with a chainsaw and maybe we can donate it to our neighbor's wood pile that just about 3 feet away from the stump.  It's dead and pine, so it would burn in no time!

Now to get rid of the other 2 dead trees in our yard! 

My poor lilac has 2 broken branches on it, too.  It was almost flat. 
 This tree of the neighbor's is usually totally upright.  Here it is touching my driveway.
 It's supposed to be slowly raising in temperature until it's around 50 Thursday / Friday so all this crap will be mostly gone - hooray!

#TFTLS

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Moooo & a false alarm!

So yeah, I wasn't feeling the scale this week and didn't go weigh in.  I got some things done around the house, so I wasn't sitting around in front of the TV, I promise!

I was supposed to report back last weekend about some girly issues I was having.

Soooo.  I really thought I was pregnant!  I guess it's possible.  It hasn't been that long since I went off the pill, but I'd also gone 4 years before not taking them and obviously nothing happened.  Can you imagine that shock?  I'm 42, Randy's 48. My only child is already 18 - I sure as hell wouldn't want to start all over again NOW!  We'd have to move, no question about that.  We have an 850 sq foot, 2 bedroom house with no storage, let alone room for a little person.

So here's the story, it's somewhat TMI but I'll try to keep it clean.

2 weeks after I'd missed my period, I told Randy (like why wouldn't I??)  We both kind of stared at each other with pursed lips and really big eyes and some rapid blinking.  I was having occasional nausea, my nipples were very tender, my jeans were feeling a bit snug and I just felt different, I can't explain how.  What would you think???

So we decided I would wait another week and then take a test.  However 3 days before I was going to take it.....Mother Nature arrived with a vengeance.  I swear she was making up for lost time.  It was ugly. Horrible.

So it was obvious I wasn't with child.  But I physically didn't feel any different!  So I decided to go ahead and take a test anyway.  I felt SO awkward buying that test!  My heart was racing.  I kept feeling everyone was staring and judging me, even tho I went to an out-of-the-way CVS that I'd never been to, didn't use my rewards card and paid cash.  How pathetic is that?!?!?!

Behold the power of the mind!  I took the test last Thursday, fully expecting it to be negative and of course it was.  The very next day (Friday aka jean day at work) - I wore a pair of jeans right out of the dryer and they fit fine.  And I feel totally normal now.  Sheesh.

So now I just have to contend with my bum knee acting up.  I can stand just fine on it, but it doesn't want to bend as far as it should.  And occasionally it'll just give out under me.  So I'm being really careful on stairs and getting out of the car, since it's my left knee.

This is our tree in the backyard around 5:30 this evening.
This is the neighbor's usually upright tree hanging over our fence around 7:15.
That's some seriously wet & heavy snow out there!  It started at 7am and we have about 6 inches out there - and I just talked to my sister (about 35 miles north of me) and it started at 8am there and she's got over a foot!  I'm really not looking forward to the 0-dark-thirty trip to the studio tomorrow for the annual dance intensive that Miss Angela has.  I know our neighborhood will still be a mess, but hoping the county has the main roads cleared and salted.  I'm fully confident in my own driving abilities and common sense - it's all the other idiots who suddenly forgot how to drive in the snow that scare me!

So I'm still not loving the new WW "experience".  I updated my mobile app yesterday but it doesn't seem to be any different as of yet. Whew!  I can't believe they got rid of the progress reports! I used those all the time!  It's hard to find the "community" section, too.  You'd think they would have that easier to find instead of down at the bottom with the rest of the links nobody cares about. And it has my original starting weight wrong from way back in the day!  Not that that matters anymore, but I would like accurate numbers!  When I chatted with tech support about it, she was about useless. She said "our systems in website (???) is still updating and our engineers are working on it.  All your points will be aback to normal after the updates."  So why was it even changed to begin with???  My info should have just transferred right over.  So my goal weight should still say 175.0 instead of 175.38.  Where the heck did they get that??   Pppfth.  And I need to spring for a FitBit or some sort of activity monitor because as of the 19th, my Activelink is obsolete.  It won't even sync anymore.  I liked it because it clipped on my bra and was out of the way.  I don't think I'd like one that goes on my wrist.   Adding activity is a pain in the ass, since I'm not going to keep track of each time I go up and down stairs and all the walking I do at work individually and stuff like that!   

Oh crap - I have to be at the studio at 7:30 am!  I better get my carcass to bed!  Later folks!

#SnS

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Skywatch Friday 11/20

There's a couple leaves holding on at the top of the maple in my back yard!
Taken last Sunday on a glorious sunny & 60+ degree day.

Linking up over at Skywatch Fridays.

#TFTLS

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Titles are hard!

I never know what to put as my post title!  Maybe if I stuck with just one topic...pffft!  That's crazy talk.

Bowling was a lot of fun last Friday.  Our 'team' was 6 players - me, Randy, both sisters, a nephew and his girlfriend.  We did awesome on our first game - first of all, we're NOT bowlers, so breaking 100 is an amazing game for us - Randy got 170 and I got a 147 which are probably our all time high scores!  But then in game 2, Randy got a 74 and I had 120.

It was "cosmic" bowling.
In the past, a bunch of people donated baskets to raffle off - this time it was by level of dance.  So all the girls from level 5 contributed $10 to a basket; then level 4, etc.  And there was one giant basket of booze!  Happily, I won one of the baskets!  It was a spa theme - so a nice canvas basket filled with slippers, towels, lotions, sugar scrubs, bath bombs, foot soaks, candles etc, etc, etc....and 2 certificates for hour-long massages!!  And the mom who put it all together was afraid she didn't do a good job!!!  DUDE!  It's freakin' awesome!  It helps that level 4 is the biggest of all the levels, so more $ to play with.
Saturday was the first of the craft shows.  It grew quite significantly this year.  before it was just in the high school but this year it oozed over into the middle school.  The high & middle school are U shaped and connected in the middle by the pool.  Booths were lined up across the front of the pool and around 2 halls of the middle school!  I haven't been in there since I was a senior and helped out in the counselor's office during a class. We were all disappointed that our ornament lady wasn't there.  We've all bought from her since 2000!  Now I don't have an ornament for little kitty Daisy.  Maybe she'll be at the one this coming up weekend.  One thing I did get was this awesome spider web.  The web itself is a chain and the spider a fancy pin.  The frame is about an 8x10 size.  I really like it and it was marked down!  
Sunday we spent the day outside, cleaning up the yard before winter and hanging Christmas lights (that are NOT plugged in yet!!)  It was sunny and in the 60s - gorgeous to be outside in mid-November in jeans & a t-shirt! We were beat, but everything got done.  Not all the leaves got picked up but oh well.  We filled up 13 lawn & leaf bags and the entire 200 gallon yard waste can! 

Last night I went online and put together our Christmas cards - we've never done photo cards before but I've wanted to.  This meant staging the cats so we could get all 3.  After much hilarity - this is what we ended up with. At least Chester is looking!
We didn't torture Jack by putting the Santa outfit back on him, just the hat.  He was freaked out because he'd never been on our bed before and he was so funny - he belly crawled across it! He's been on Angel's bed plenty, but it's a lot lower and not as squishy as ours.  We had to bribe him with treats to get a shot where he doesn't look like he's in trouble.
Then I used a nice selfie Randy & I took last summer with a Coke can that says LOVE on it, one of Angel's senior pictures of her sitting in the studio with all her dance shoes and the last one is the 3 of us at her graduation, with her holding up her diploma.  It's going to be nice. 

Tomorrow Randy is leaving for Arkansas for almost 2 weeks!  He goes to a friend's house for a radio contest they always do first, then he'll spend some time with his Mom in Hot Springs.  She has a follow-up appointment Monday after Thanksgiving to make sure her cancer is totally gone and he'll go with her to that and start heading home that Tuesday.  So right now I have a bunch of laundry going so I can kind of start packing for him and when Angel gets home from dance, we're going out for a late-ish dinner.  

I mentioned the second craft show the Saturday and Sunday I'll be spending at the studio with Miss Angela and all the rest of her competition team for an all-day dance intensive. They bring in guest teachers in all styles and they dance their happy little butts off.  I volunteered to help out - I'll probably run back and forth between the 2 rooms and take pictures like I did last year.   

Welp, it looks like Randy will be here in a few minutes.  Got to love the trackers on our ham radios (APRS)!  Pretty useful stuff right there.

#TFTLS

Friday, November 13, 2015

Happy Friday the 13th!

Aw hell, it's Friday, so it will be HAPPY!

Heehee, I just looked back and 3 out of my last 4 posts have "happy" in the titles!

So I'd say about 98% of the Halloween stuff is put away for the season.  I always manage to find something that I forgot or I'd clearly forgotten last year and tucked away where it doesn't belong.  That being said - I just found my pumpkin carving set - in a box of fall / Thanksgiving stuff!  

I didn't get rid of as much H'ween stuff as I would have liked, but it is all organized now and the totes are labelled with the contents.  It really sucks when you have stuff that you like, but just haven't put it out for the last couple years.  Makes it really hard to get rid of it!  Funny that it doesn't seem like I had that much stuff out!  I didn't even bother with the apothecary this year. 
10-19 gallon totes
2-35(ish) gallon totes
3-10 gallon totes
Can't forget these guys!
The totes sat on the patio for a couple days until I got all the Christmas stuff pulled out of the corner of the garage.  Then I put the H'ween totes in and the C'mas in front so they're easily accessible when the weekend after Thanksgiving rolls around. 

I put a bunch of stuff out for the Vietnam Veterans to pick up today. I went thru my bookshelves (and piles near the nightstand) and got rid of 31 books! Angel got rid of a whole garbage bag full of shoes and 2 more bags of clothes between the 2 of us. And because I was in a hurry to set the bags out before I left for work, I left a box in the living room. Dammit. So there will be another pickup before the end of the year.

We have a driver at work we call Crazy Ron.  Apparently his wife's hobby is dressing their Golden Retrievers up for any number of reasons and he feels the need to give us pictures of them!  I have a file labelled "Ron's Dogs" dating back to 2005 of these poor dogs.  She must be losing her touch, since she ordered the wrong sized Santa costume this year and he brought it in for whoever could use it.  Everyone else has either big dogs or little yappy dogs, so by default it left me.  It was a tight squeeze fitting it on Jack since he's an abnormally large Beagle, but we did it.  And he's clearly not thrilled with it, but we had a good laugh! 
I do want to put it back on him when we go see the family at Christmas, just so we can watch him run around in it.

I brought in a box of nutcrackers today, but the only ones I set out were my 2 hockey guys.  These were the ones I've acquired since last January so they weren't nicely wrapped and in a tote yet.  I'll get some pics soon.  I'm sticking with getting funky / unusual / unique ones instead of the average, run of the mill nutcrackers.  I've got an Eskimo, a Viking, a fairy en pointe, a German (with beer stein, pretzel and string of sausages!), just to name a few.

Turn your head to the left and look at the teddy bear!

So tonight is the bowling fundraiser for dance and that starts at 10pm so it's gonna be a long day!  Then tomorrow is the first of the craft shows with Mom & the sisters.  I'm looking forward to that, it's always a nice day - even if it is located at one of my least favorite places ever, my old high school.  blargh! 

Later!

#TFTLS