Friday, September 30, 2016

The plunge has been taken!

I officially imported my posts & comments from ...Slow & Steady over to here!  If you see anything broken, please let me know!

It was a lot easier than I expected, so that's why I'm slightly suspicious that something is wrong that I haven't found yet.

I'm still pretty happy with this choice to combine blogs.  I was posting over there only once a week or so while I was going to Weight Watchers....and since I haven't gone there since before my surgery in July, there's hasn't been much action over there.

I posted a link directing my followers from ...SnS to come here, so welcome anyone who comes over!


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Thursday, September 22, 2016

Skywatch Friday - Happy Fall!

Leaves are really starting to change around SE Michigan!  

 over my next door neighbor's house

Linking up at Skywatch Fridays

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Monday, September 19, 2016

10 days til set-up!!

Anyone who follows my blog(s) and / or any type of social media, knows that I love Halloween!  

I almost can't believe it, but next Thursday will be go-time!  Miss Angela's birthday is the 28th (more on that in a minute) so I wait until the day after to at least get the cemetery fence / sign / headstones / blowmolds up.  The rest gets filled in at my leisure.  I spent some time after work today going thru some boxes finding stuff that I've acquired in the "off"season and tucked here & there.  So indoor decor is slowly working it's way inside. 

I'm taking Angel to get another tattoo tomorrow - I'm such a bad influence!  She went with me to get one of mine touched up and that started it all.  I took her to get her belly button pieced on her 16th birthday, first tattoo at 18, now this!  This one will be fun (aka painful) - she wants words on her ribs.  "Life's a dance / sometimes you lead / sometimes you follow".  Yet another one that's pretty appropriate for her.  The first one says "live, love, dance" on her hip.
artistic iPhone with flashlight shot
"dew on pre-dawn rose"

The first weekend in October is pretty much shot - since Miss Angela is turning 19, there will be a trip to Canada.  It's pretty much a rite of passage for most kids in SE Michigan to head over into Ontario for their first "legal" alcohol since the drinking age is 19 across the border.  I personally missed out on this, since I was already in the Navy when I turned 19 (but I had older friends so it didn't matter!)  But I'll be her designated driver and at least one of my sisters is going, too.  I'm kinda of disappointed for her that Danny's closed & the building burnt down.  Danny's was a male strip joint in Windsor - heehee!  We took my niece there when she turned 19 and the 2 younger girls were looking forward to going, too.  Denied.  Boo. 

Sunday is our family's annual apple orchard trip to celebrate Angel & my nephew Austin's birthdays.  It's always a fun time, even tho they're getting old! 

Last weekend, Angel & I braved the rain and drove to Hell for Hearse Fest!  Hell, Michigan is about 70 miles SW from here.  It's actually 3 buildings.  A store called Hell in a Handbasket, an ice cream "creamatorium" called Screams and the Hell Hole Bar.  There's also a putt-putt golf course and a tiny chapel where yes, you can get married in Hell.  I'd never been to this event, but it was pretty fun!  There were vendors selling all sorts of cool, spooky stuff (Here's the Mlive.com slideshow), people in costumes, a DJ, food at the Casketeria and of course - hearses!  I took a bunch of pictures, but my camera apparently didn't like the rain and most of my pics were slightly out of focus - but here's a link to my post about it.  
I blended in with all the rest of the Goth-wannabes with my black shirt, hoodie, skeleton necklace & coffin earrings - too bad I had on jean capris.  Angel was 'basic white girl' in her Pink hoodie and leggings & Nike's and beanie hat.
Gosh, what else? 
Daisy has a weird foot fetish?  This happens every morning while trying to brush my teeth.
Mmmm.  Pumpkin spice x 2!
There's no way I could pass up a Thanksgiving nutcracker at the Salvation Army!

The dance season is off to a slow start.  There are 2 new teachers at the studio this year, but one has a scheduling conflict with her college courses, so there is going to be some class rearranging and Saturday classes until the semester is over.  Longtime teacher Gabby just got married and is still on her honeymoon, so her classes are being covered by someone else.  It's not very productive right now!  There's a team parent meeting Wednesday, so it'll be neat to find out about the newest endeavor - a production!  Meghan is planning a production routine of Clue.  She's already picked out the leads - the biggest girls will be the characters (Angel will be Miss Peacock because she looks good in blue).  The next younger girls will be the weapons and the littlest ones will be maids.  They'll be going jazz, tap, hiphop & lyrical in this!  I'm going to volunteer to help with the props.  We've only used an actual prop once in the last 10 years!

We have the first injury of the season already!  Angel has been trying for several years to get her aerial - basically a cartwheel without using your hands.  She's got the power & the height but could never get her head into it to keep those hands up.  Finally - on the same day last week, her & another girl who has been trying forever, too, both did it!  And had to do them several times to make sure it wasn't a fluke.  Then the next day, they both had sore calves on the left side - the landing side.  And Angel is still gimping on hers.  In fact she was really hobbling over the weekend so we had to stop at the store on the way to Hell to get some pain patches to put on it.  She must have pulled a muscle pretty good or something.

That catches up everything here.  Plans are still rolling along to combine my 2 blogs, I'm looking forward to making this happen.  It seems pretty straight-forward.  Hopefully it doesn't have any glitches, fingers crossed for an easy transition.
Later!
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Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Change is a'comin'!

I have been waffling about this my mind for a while (and also way in the past) and I have finally decided to combine this blog with one of my others 

I've been mainly using that to keep track of my weight loss & health, blah blah blah, but I repeat a lot between here & there.  

I really only posted there once a week or so and its been even less lately since my surgery and haven't been going to Weight Watchers.  

I think it'll mesh in nicely here.   

This means there will be a few updates happening, so look for the new & improved Tales from the Love Shaque on October 1 !!!

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There's change a'comin!

I waffled about this way back in the day, but I've decided to combine this blog with my other one, Tales from the Love Shaque.  

TFTLS is my personal blog of life & randomness so this will actually fit in there nicely.

I don't feel as tho I am maintaining 3 blogs as well as I should be (Maple Grove Cemetery is my 3rd and there's no question about that staying a separate entity!) and I really don't post here that often and there is a lot of repeating between here & TFTLS.   

I haven't yet decided what I'm doing with this blog so as of October 1, it will be dormant.   This gives me time to figure out redirect links and all that stuff.  

So wish me luck! 

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Well, that was weird....

It has never bothered me to go to the dentist before, but yesterday broke that record!
Gratuitous Chester picture, 
meeting me at the back door with a dirty sock. 

I called about a week and a half ago because I felt a chip in my tooth / filling / crown / whatever.  It was right along my gumline and my tongue kept hitting it.  I called and they couldn't get me in until yesterday.  Neat.  But it didn't hurt so I dealt with it.  Of course, that weekend the tooth broke in half.  But it still didn't hurt.   Come to find out, my tooth didn't hurt because it was one I'd had a root canal on a few years ago, so there was no nerve.

I went in yesterday and for some reason, the smell and taste of everything seemed 100 times worse than usual!   The dentist only gave me about 1/2 a shot of Novacaine to humor me, I probably didn't need it.  But damn if he didn't pull the needle out and drip some of that crap into my mouth. Gross.  Then he numbed my gums a little bit with some nasty rotten banana flavored stuff.   He used a laser and the most horrible smell ever was coming out of my mouth!!  I found out later he was using it to cut & cauterize my gums because there was decay below the gumline - so that was basically burning flesh I was smelling!  When they took the impressions - they used too much of that foam stuff and it shifted underneath my tongue so between that and the drool I couldn't swallow - my gag reflex went into overdrive.  They had to redo it with less foam.  The assistant dripped water down my neck after one of the rinses.  When they cemented the temporary crown onto the tooth, I could smell the cement before she even got it close to me and then I could imagine feeling the fumes wafting thru my mouth.  And it tasted horrible since you can't help but taste it, too.

So basically, it was one of the most awful appointments I've ever had and it wasn't even due to pain!  Then later when I got home, I had the worst chills!  Randy got home from work and I was sitting out on the patio in a hoodie and flannel pants - and it was around 90* and high humidity!  But I finally felt comfortable.  I would have been in bed before 9:30 if I hadn't had to wait for Angel to get home at 10 so we could move cars around.

Thankfully, I feel better today.  They said my mouth would be sore for a couple days from the laser and so far they're correct!  They had taken a picture of the area before cementing in the temp crown and had it up on the screen in the room.  I swear it a like a trainwreck.  I couldn't stop looking at it!  It was pretty disgusting.  I thought about taking a picture of the screen so I could share the grossness with Randy but I didn't.  You're welcome!  Because you know I would have shared it here, too!

So that was weird thing #1.  Weird thing #2 is that about a week ago I started taking these vitamin packets from GNC that the guy in there recommended.  They have a multivitamin, Triflex (their glucosamine sutff) and fish oil.  And my heel spur has really calmed down!  Before I would have to flex and stretch my feet before getting out of bed, or else I couldn't walk!  And if I sat too long at work, I'd limp for a few steps before it worked out.  I still have been doing the stretching before I get up, but it's more out of habit now.  Then I get up and can walk fine with only minimal ouchies.  I'm thinking it's the Triflex since I had been taking that for my knees (they grind) but stopped before my surgery and haven't taken any since.

So anyhoo.  Classes start back up at the studio next week, but I don't think I'm ready for Zumba yet!  It's tough to get motivated with these shorter days!

#SnS