Therapy for a Bad Day

Thank you, Johnny, for THIS. Satisfying, indeed. Especially making it bounce. I picture it sobbing when it shakes there, in a lump.

It also makes a good day better.

(Note: if you are of the Republican Persuasion, you probably don't want to view it, or if you do, pretend it's someone else in a mask.)

Conversations With Colin II

Our scene: Tonight. Colin, recently bathed and therefore no longer smelly, lolling on the couch.

Colin: "Mom! Wait! This may be the worst Christmas ever!!!"

Me: "Really? Why?"

Colin: "Because Molly will chew up all the ornaments!!!"

Me: "Oh. Don't worry. We're putting the tree up in the dining room and we'll put a gate across the doorway so that Molly can't get in and get the tree. Mad-Kitty will probably try to climb it, but we can at least keep the dog away."

(note--the dog now rarely chews up anything that isn't hers, but old reputations die hard.)

Colin: "But what about Santa!?!?! How will Santa get in?!?!?)

Me: "That's easy. He can just climb over the gate, like dad and me. We'll keep Molly in our room Christmas Eve so she doesn't bark at Santa."

Colin: "Or pee on Santa, like she pees on everybody."


Too true. Lucky Santa. That should be good for an extra present or two.

Too bad for my step-mom that she wasn't Santa. Over. And over. And over.

Burrrrrrp!

A very happy day of gluttony to you all!

The remains of the day:



One of the scads and scads of things I am thankful for are all of you, my adored blog friends. My life is an even happier place because of each of you.

*Big, somewhat sweaty and distinctly pumpkin pie-y smooches to each and every one of you.*

In honor of our splendid repast, I present a very fuzzy (because it was at the way-back of the back and taken from my bedroom window) picture of a band of wild turkeys of various ages trotting along the grass line, before hunting season, a few months ago.



MmmmmmmmTASTY!

(Note: Our turkey was free-range and fresh, but not quite this free-range and fresh.)

Destiny

This morning.

The only day I have to work this week.

You'd think it'd be easy to dress myself.

So on goes the tank with the skinny brown cardigan over it. Then the pants are chosen, which need a touch of the iron. The socks, shoes, watch to coordinate. Finally the earrings.

Last glance in the mirror prior to heading to the kitchen, where the coffee lives.

That spot on the right thigh didn't come out in the wash and is much more noticeable at a distance than up close. Looks like a grease spot. The size of an eyeball.

Which means it can be seen by an eyeball. And won't be covered by a white lab coat.

So, off come the pants, and on go the other (unwrinkled/unstained) ones, which don't go with the top, which is changed, which doesn't go with the earrings, which are changed, which lead to changing the socks, which leads to changing the shoes.

And the watch.

Good thing I only have 2 lipsticks and managed to choose the right one.

Otherwise I'd have gone back to bed.

Instead, I got my coffee.

The coffee that slopped onto my right thigh while getting out of the car at work.

The spot that is the size of an eyeball.

That the lab coat doesn't cover.

Abducted By Aliens

What the hell? It's been over a week since I last posted and I swear it seemed like only a couple of days.

Been taken off to the Mothership, I tell you.

They say that time seems to perpetually speed up the older you get. If this is how it is now, should I make it to 80, I will have to start my holiday baking in January. By the time I take that first sheet of cookies out of the oven, it will be Christmas, again.

So, to assuage my conscience, I will cobble a quickie post and throw up a few pictures to say that I'm still alive and definitely kicking.



As you can see, the third snowfall, last Friday, was of adequate volume and wetness to make a decent sized snowman. Colin made his own but decided to wack it with a large stick, rendering it back into a large pile of snow, now processed. He then had fun perfecting the technique of rolling large snow balls, which he decided would be perfect as seats for all of us for the next several months. Snow patio furniture, if you will. (Well, snow middle-of-the-pasture furniture.) Sadly, it warmed up and our new set of chairs has now percolated down to join the contents of the well.

Drinkable seating. How environmentally recyclable.

Sara's party was nice and quiet, just the way I like it. Well, sort of quiet, if you call 2 highly sucrosed kids pinging off every surface "quiet". Sadly, next year, I will no longer be able to escape the necessity of The Party for her, either, and merely a cake, streamers, balloons, hats, and other decorations, along with presents will NOT be enough. She will have to have 'friends' and 'games' and it will have to be 'planned' by 'me'.

Poor kids. Their mom is such a whiner. I hate throwing parties. I suck at it.

As you can see, she chose a theme of Hello Kitty and Dora the Explorer, with lots of shocking Pink! and Purple!

My teeth literally hurt:



The photo does it no justice, just amplify the decorations 5 fold and inject insulin straight into your bloodstream to counter the effects.

What is it with little girls and pink? Her favorite outfit is the pink shirt with the pink jeans and the bright magenta socks. Pair it with her pink coat and mittens and, Wow!, grab your sunglasses.

I must leave you now, dearest darlings, and continue to herd the mess that is my house. It's mostly upstairs, now, and heading to the corral of the kitchen and living room, where it will be finally dealt with.

Chop!

You see, my Dad and Cathy are coming tomorrow for a whole week of food and giggling.

See you in the funny papers!

For Sara, Turning 4

And so, darling, exasperating, adorable daughter, you are 4.

You make the sun rise and make my heart glad. You make the birds sing and the moon shine. You bring such tears to my eyes as I write this, both from the love I feel for you and the utter sappiness of this drivel, that I find to save my keyboard and your respect for me, should you read this in the future, I will have to resort to something a bit less sentimental.



(Oh, hush, you-all. You knew I couldn't keep that up.)

So.

Sara.

4 years old.

This is the last year I have you home with me. Next year, you will head off to 4-year-old kindergarten, on the big yellow bus with your brother, something you are looking forward to with glee. Me? I dread it. Sure, I will suddenly be at leisure 2 mornings a week to do things for myself, something I've not had for about 8 years at this point. I've been alone in my house a total of 2 times in the past 4 years. Well, alone with the pets. Free to hop in the car and dawdle over some shopping. Or clean with no interruptions. Or work in the garden like a banshee. Or just sit on the deck with coffee and a book in the sun, or with the same on the couch with a blanket, as the weather dictates.

But I will miss you like hell, like I missed your brother when he headed off.

So, I will try to make the most of this last year of our time together, just you and me. Because you really are a ton of fun to be with.

You are gregarious and silly but still very shy around those you don't know. This means when we are out and about, you stick pretty close to me, sometimes making it rather difficult to walk as you have a death grip on my leg or my waist or both hands. Not that I mind.

You've done the quantum leap thing the past 2 months. Literally. You outgrew most of the clothes I got you for winter, including your socks. Good thing I waited to get your parka. You have developed a love for board games, especially those for kids a few years older than you are. You also love to color and play with your dolls and animals.

You hate barrettes and such in your hair, though.

You love to cuddle and don't mind all the kisses I give you.

If your brother has it/is doing it/likes it/hates it, so do you.



This causes your brother no end of grief, but as he honestly likes you, he doesn't suffer as much as he might.



You have this aggravating thing where you answer a question with the opposite of what you really mean. If I ask you if you want some milk, you firmly say, "No." Then have a fit when I don't give you some, because you really, really wanted some milk more than anything in the world.

You are also a perfectionist (now where on earth would you get that?)...



...and if I make even a tiny mistake in the long book we are reading (which you know by heart) before bed, you become completely incensed. You revoke my reading privileges, re-read yourself the page before the egregious error, the page of the egregious error AND the page after the egregious error, before returning the book to me with a severe warning look.

Now, as I am clearly not up to snuff, I am also having to use my finger to underline each word as it's read, so you can follow along more easily.

Did I mention that you can't read, yet!!! Who are you to judge?

Oh, yeah. My daughter, that's who.

You still need a nap, thank the lord and all the saints. Sadly, I can see the days of napping are numbered.



(Yes. She's sleeping. Really and truly. )

So a big, smoochy, happy birthday, my best girl.



With love from your adoring, embarrassing mom.

Don't worry. You will have years to pay me back for all this. Plus, you'll get to put me in a home when I'm too old and doddery to prevent it. Gotta get my licks in now.

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(And a happy 2nd blogiversary to me. Who knew I'd be able to keep this up? Getting braver, I am, posting pictures of the kids and myself, each carefully culled as none should allow a stalker to ID any of us at a playground. Most of these shots don't really look that much like us, either.)

Had I Known, I'd Have Clued Him In

Today, election day, was a Most Auspicious Day in the House O' Piffle.

Charles, as many of you know, a newly minted Yank (yeah, yeah: 1/2 Yank, 1/2 Canuck. Still sexy and semi-foreign, thank God, and with a legitimate claim to root for Team Canada in Olympic hockey) got to vote in his very first election!

Huzzah! Huzzah!

And how did this Political Science major feel?

"Good."

?'Good'?

Merely 'Good'?

"Yeah. I didn't get to use a machine. I wanted to use a machine."

Poor guy. He's waited all his life.

How anticlimactic. Voting by magic marker.

At least he was 'pre-registered' and got to go right in and vote, unlike me, who waited for an hour to re-register and then got to vote. Some state wide thing.

I love our town. Where else would you be standing in a non-moving line while, one-by-one, you got entered into a computer by a poor exhausted election worker who hadn't even finished his lunch (it was 7:20 pm by the time I got to him, the line stretching back down the hall, past the door and doubling back on itself, probably another 40+ souls long) with your fellow townsfolks cracking jokes and no one complaining? I even got to shake the hand of the hither-to-unmet neighbor (who lives a mile down the road) who pulled over and plowed my drive last winter and then went on his merry way before I could even thank him?

I swear.

I live in Utopia.

Utopia with cow poop on the breeze.

Excuses, Excuses

I know. I suck. Used to post about 2-3 times a week, now it's maybe weekly. What gives?

I think it's a combination of the end of the year busies and some end of the year lethies. (My friend D's word. When you are overcome with lethargy. The Lethies.)

I really have been busy, though. And I think of you all. Often. As I am busy being busy.

Work is suddenly much busier, which is all to the good if you are wanting to continue to be employed, although not so good if you are one of the 'huddled masses yearning to breathe free'. Much of the infectious diseases 'round these parts.

Yes. Of course I've gotten my flu shot. November 1st. 9 more days until it kicks in full force, may the force be with me. I've also started to get that dry hand syndrome thingy that I hate 6 months out of the year, where you have to slather the greasy hand ointment over your poor cracking and itching manos as you remove every last bit of moisture from them with the frequent hand decontaminating, at least what moisture the cold, wind, and humidity of 2 have left them.

So. What the hell else have I been up to?

Made some pies. One apple and one completely-from-scratch pumpkin, from the pumpkin that Colin brought home from the annual school trip to yet another pumpkin patch.



I loved the fresh pumpkin so much that I'm making it that way for Thanksgiving, provided that I can keep the one remaining pumpkin from rotting away. See prior post, dammit. 5/6 pumpkins bit the dust and are happily rotting (or freezing, awaiting rotting in April, in the composter). The trick? Sieve the pulp. Creamy smooth. Sighhhhh.

The apple one was quite good, as I added about 1/4 cup of brandy to the shebang.

I've been tackling the by-the-stable mess and the raised beds from hell. Sort of a joint project. I schlepped the floor of the stable:



(basically compacted and well rotted horse manure, with assorted fungi, which I will probably curse in 5 months as my veggie garden sprouts giant man-eating toadstools that lay siege to the house and demand their own dwelling place) to the top of the veggie bed:



And then Me, myself and I waged war on the 10'Lx20'Wx5'H ft area directly to the left of the stable, where my pal Deb and I had dumped about 1000 wheelbarrows of horse shit 3 years previously and then just left. It got colonized by all sorts of weeds, (yes, even the damn thistles) and it took a couple of years to get the timing right, but this year, I descended upon it as soon as the plants died back, but yet before the snows, and pulled up every mother-hating bit of it, including the pile of fence posts, horse gates, large wooden posts, miles of 1/2" fence wire, and such that we'd just piled there in our zeal to get the stable and pasture usable. Funny, we haven't used it for anything except to store an old push mower that, given the 8 acres of pasture we call 'heaven', we won't likely use, and the old table the previous owners left in the basement. But NOW it holds old fence posts, chicken wire and many rotting boards 10-15' long.

Bonfire time.

Actually, Charles has had 2 bonfires during the month of October. I could hear the souls of the ripped up weeds and such that I'd thrown in the fire pit screaming.

I laughed.

Next spring I'm planning to plant 3-4 apple trees.

Currently, I'm mulling over apple varieties. It was pointed out to me that the presence of apples will really attract the deer. I figure that some of the apples will ferment on the ground, providing the deer with a Calvados meal and me with more blog fodder.

We had 5 young deer traipse through our yard, today, and put on a macho show. None of them had antlers, and I swear they had zits, so we figured they were the human equivalent of 14 or 15 years old. 3 of the 5 strutted out to the middle of the east pasture and started this prolonged display of head-butting and giving wedgies. The other 2, obviously girls and embarrassed by the whole display, headed off into the trees, ditching the dweebs. So sad. They'll be getting their driver's licenses by next spring and then they'll be attempting to buy cheap crappo beer.

It's snowed:



Twice:



Actually, it's snowed more than that, if you count the white flakes coming down, but only twice has it stuck on the ground.

Sara found a toad, which she didn't step on, thank goodness, Colleen.



We just prodded it with a stick:



And then let it flee to a crack by the garage:



I found a walking stick bug and managed not to scream like a girl, but to pick it up with a large stick and put it on top of the porch railing and run for the camera:



It then, sensing that it's soul was about to be sold to the internet, tried to flee by dropping to the cement and slooooooly run away:



Oh, so slooooooowly:



So, those are my excuses.

Forgive me? Nah. Didn't think so.