Day Quote. For The BF. This Is His World Now. With A Flower.
Because all the best quotes come from TV. How To Live With Your Parents (For The Rest Of Your Life). I think it’s canceled already, but the wisdom will live forever. Reasons don’t work when you are dealing with the thieves of your youth. So stomp your foot, slouch that back, cross your arms and roll those eyes. Now, dramatically sigh out loud, and repeat after me:
Rational arguments are not going to work with me because I am the child. And the whole point of being the child is your feelings and needs don’t have to make sense, they just have to be addressed.
—Sarah Chalke, as Polly
Bonus Day!
Still working out the kinks in my camera phone. Not all my “files” are making it through. Maybe it’s a new advanced Samsung feature when you try to send pictures through the system it automatically corrupts the file of the crap shots so you don’t even waste your time.
That company is so smart. The first picture is a flower from my neighbors house. I have more. Of course I do. Today is an unexpected day off, so I like to call them the bonus days, in life. My plans are suddenly open and fluid. Maybe I will catch up on sleep. Maybe I will post all day. Maybe I will take a shower and remove all this excess hair from my legs. Yuck. Maybe I will sit on my ass playing Tiny Village. Now that it is my only game and play app, I can really focus on it.
*Quick side note: what do we, you, the general public, think about spending actual real world dollars on these games? I am seriously considering paying cash for crystals because I want to do stuff in this fake world faster. Leave me a note/comment when you can. Thoughts, ideas? Is this the lamest way to spend money ever? I can justify it by saying it’s an early birthday present to myself. Maybe? I got paid today and I have time to burn. These are my “for” arguments.
*Extra quick side note: I have updates on my health. Too fat. Too little exercise. Apparently I need to be doing the “cardio” kind. B/P still a skosh too elevated. I have been increased on my starter meds. But I’d like to D/C them altogether. The MD said I could if I wasn’t a rolly-polly when I come back to see him next time. Lupus titer high and positive again. (Lupus panel negative though. I may have a life-long, general, vague, comes-and-goes, inflammatory disorder to deal with for my golden years. If a face rash and some bad numbers on a blood test is all I get from this over the years, I will be a very happy camper. I can exercise and stay out of the sun. No problem.) I will be heading out to the garage to pull some of my “diet” books and revamp the current food plan. But first I need to get that shower/shave thing out of the way. And believe me I have plans for more postings about this. I already have a title for my new quest in mind. “144 by 44”. See, I will be 44 this year. And my follow up appt is after my birthday. 144 lbs might not be exactly do-able in that time frame, three months, but I can try. I hesitate to throw out my actual weight number because I am not sure if it’s fat or not. It’s a good amount under 200. It’s definitely not slim. But I am a heavy person in general. Like, heavy bones. I know that sounds like an excuse, but I’m like a deceptive bag of concrete. I might look compact and weigh what the number says on the sack, but when you go to pick me up, I-Yi-Yi!! I weigh a ton. And now your back hurts! 144 would be the least amount I have ever weighed as an adult with children. Except for the brief month, many years ago, when I weighed 138 because of a literal diet, of coffee and breath mints, when I was going through some shit. I literally could not eat food without throwing up. Not my fault. But also not a story for this bonus day either. Spoils the fun.
Maybe I will get new grass today. Literally. The village I live in tore up my yard as you may remember from ONE YEAR AGO. Almost to the day. Because of broken water mains. Click to read. Catch up here. Well they are back. Sort of. They have been coming to the house every day this week doing something to the front. Flatten it out. Dig up more. Shore up the edges. Fill in with dirt. Smooth that out. I have got to believe that sod is next. Maybe today?! I hope they hurry. I hear storms are approaching. Storms with really cool names. Derecho.
The following is copied word for word from a weather news site:
A derecho, Spanish for straight, is a widespread and long-lasting storm that comes with fast-moving thunderstorms and rain, and also can bring damaging high winds, hail as big as golf balls as well as tornadoes. Weather forecasters have been warning that this rare weather phenomenon, which last year left a 700-mile trail of damage across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic, this time could hit a swath of states from Iowa to Maryland starting Wednesday.
Yay! At least I won’t be at work and then have to drive in it this time. I also need to seriously update some of the pages on this site. I noticed some old info floating around and we could use a freshening. Let me finish this quick. I’m running out of shower time before these kids get home. I will try to link the yard thing and post the new pics of the yard. And some flowers and probably birds. And lottery news. Still working on the scratch-offs, but I can tell you, so far, we are not winners. Still have to work for the money. I have 4 cards/chances left. Wouldn’t this be a great site if I could just write every day about how much money I have and how I don’t have to do anything, ever, again in real life if I don’t want to? I would just post title after title with some picture taken from my couch: Still Rich. Suckers! Oh to dream….Later.
That would be The Truck. And The Dig. And The Smooth. Hopefully the next picture will be, “The Grass”. Ugh. My kids have started calling me for rides and I am still hairy. Ugh. Bonus Time Shower Time. Although shower time should really be an All-The-Time. Ugh. Wasting Time. Later.
Before Shower Dandelion Picture With Daughter
That’s one of those titles that tried to “sum up” for me so I would NOT type a paragraph about a very long dandelion. Fail. Another day another weed. I think all the yellow, then puffed, dandelions are gone now. All that is left are giant beds of spiky, dark green leaves with long stalks sticking up out of them, and dead head buds drooping over in everyone’s front yard. You can try to pull them, but beware, you never get the whole thing. Usually the mess breaks off at the dirt line and in 2 days another fully grown but somehow dead-looking stalk, with leaves, will appear in it’s place, plus three more of its friends. Dandelions know where they can spread safely. They know who’s not really serious about playing the weed killer game. Anyway, we found this one walking around on our block. Can’t get perspective on how long it is from the above pic? I know. I just thought that picture with my pretty girl was kind of nice and she always likes to see herself looking cute. The next picture should give some idea. It was the longest one we saw all season. Don’t worry. We picked it. (Duh) And photographed it. And then my daughter shook it all to hell and scattered a thousand more seeds to spread the fun as far as the wind could blow it. Yay for tall weeds!
Dandelion Puff
Times Two. When I came home from work the other night, this lone dandelion puff was just laying on the patio, in front of the chair, like it rolled there all by itself. Or someone placed it there very specifically. Maybe an animal moved it. Who knows? It didn’t have a stem, or anything else, anywhere near it. So of course I wasted about 20 minutes taking pictures of it, from many angles and zooms, at one in the morning, like a weirdo. I even put all my crap down in the chair to really get down and dirty with this puff. Where else are you going to get cutting edge entertainment like this for free? Devotion to a cause I guess. And…you are welcome. The “artsy” puff is below. You are welcome again.
Stevie Pic #5! And Updates Galore!
Posting to stay in the web site game today. Trying to get hits. It’s a total head thing. Posting because Stevie takes good pictures. Posting to use up all the ideas that are rattling around in my head and driving me crazy. While, in between, doing laundry. That damn laundry.
I have actually had 2 days off. This is my third. Third. (!) Why am I not all posted and getting tons of new followers? Why do I have a giant pile of crappy clothes and never worn shoes on my bedroom floor that are supposed to be purged? Why have I not seen my new little nephew in person?? Why is the laundry NOT done yet???
I have been doing things. Things like, helping my kids with this last week of real school. The boy’s last final is today. He is stressing big time too, trying to finish without any D’s. It’s been a tough and lazy year for this kid. His XBox is riding on this last grade. All he needs is a C. Seriously. And the girl has Algebra and her state Constitution to worry about. Math is killing her, but I told her to focus on the Constitution and forget the rest because at this point 8th grade is all about getting out and moving into high school. She needs to pass the Constitution, everything else, realistically, does not matter. No one EVER asks for your 8th grade transcripts. It’s all about the high school now. Fresh start. I may not be the best mom on the planet today, encouraging my kids to do mediocre, but at this point, on this Friday, with nothing left to lose or gain, passing is going to have to be good enough.
On a more “me” note, I exercised. Yes. I said, and typed, ex-er-cise. I did a workout AND ran a 5K. Yes. Ran. (Jogged. Shuffled. Walked a little. And maybe missed about 1/2 mile of the course…for a total of about a 3.9K) Two and a half miles at least. The course was kind of confusing and didn’t have clear markers at every point, but that’s not too bad. It wasn’t an official timed race, mostly fun. I finished in approx 40 minutes. Not a record breaker, but not last! And it was exercise. Outside, with other people as witness. My daughter helped organize a charity/community run for her school and I took the day off to participate. It was actually quite fun and I feel extremely proud and impressed by my daughter and her school and the whole event in general. There was about 60-70 runners and 100’s of spectators. That may not sound like a lot, but it is pretty damn good for Jr. High. My girl came up with the name and the theme and even designed the facebook page to promote it. Of course it helps that her aunt is a professional event planner and fixed all the details, but hey she’s only 14. Today the little village, tomorrow the big city! Check out the site here, if you like, just to get a feel for the kind of thing it was, and maybe next event you can come too! Here is my number bib as proof:
And holy poo-poo, my legs are killing me! The tops of my thighs seem to have taken the brunt of the exercise fall-out, and they are not allowing me to walk properly, or sit and stand with any kind of grace or fluid motion. I have to push myself up and lower myself down using my arms as brace so I just don’t fall over. So stupid.
The other thing I have been trying, “trying” being the key word in this sentence, is a new exercise craze you may have heard of called: Hip Hop Abs. More like Hip Hop Flabs for me (Sorry, that’s my one joke I keep repeating. It’s not the most original, but it usually gets a laugh.) and Hip Hop Jiggly Butt. (On another rambling side note, I have to say that when I was running, the most distracting thing was my jiggly butt. I could feel it moving. Yuk. So gross. I need to use this burst of exercise rejuvenation and keep doing it. It’s bad when you can feel all the flab actually moving. Yuk again.) My friend at work is like the new spokesperson for Hip Hop Abs or something, and texts me everyday harassing me about this shit. So I finally did it. I have discovered that I may be too old for the hippity hop, or any form of exercise that requires me to dance like a young person in a club and jerk my body all over, and into weird contortions that I probably couldn’t have done even when I was younger. My hips and shoulders don’t necessarily hip and hop in those directions. I just don’t have the rhythm or moves and ability to dance and exercise at the same time, and I never really did. Butt. I am going to try and continue anyway. If you are following along on the body pain tally, this particular tape set hurts my shoulders and arms. My abs are actually fine with this. They have probably just given up and are like, whatever lady, the layer of fat you kindly blanketed across our middle will protect us. Nice try though! Stupid abs. One day I will have a sort-of six pack and a non-30-year-old-ass. That last sentence is all for you Amanda. One day Vegas will see us again and we will ROCK that pool. We will cut through the water like sharks in the ocean. Although I will have to upgrade to a non-40-year-old-ass. Eeek. Time is a ticking.
I will continue now, to update my exercise status, again. I just re-read that, and I didn’t mean right now, but in the days and weeks to come. I even have a plan. I mean, I always have a plan. I just need to carry through. I even have a goal. Fer reals. Wanna see? I might as well just post it now, since this is already long anyway.
It’s a pair of jeans. That’s pretty much it. My entire weight loss/get healthy plan around a pair of Hollister Laguna Skinny 9L’s. I can almost squeeze my ass into them. Literally. They go right on up, and over my legs and thighs, but then stop dead at the ass portion of my body. I can almost tuck it in but then my front poochy area tries to make a stand and it’s just all-around ugly. There is no way I could zip them up and I feel bad for anyone near if I did. The pants would suffer, my flesh would suffer, anyone who has eyes and was looking at me would suffer. The jeans seem to be made of very high quality, strong denim and fasteners, but I don’t know, wearing these right now would require a lot of tensile strength that might be asking too much of a simple pair of pants. But that’s the ultimate goal.
The goal was also to have these on by my daughter’s graduation party in, oh, 22 days. I had a slim-down plan, like I did a few years back. The category heading is still over to the right there. 34 Day Summer Slim Down. Obviously I was going to modify that to account for my new timeline, but guess what? 34 days came and went and now I have 22. I aimed for that date so I could impress my whole family, current, new, and old, with my skinniness, because that’s healthy, right? Like my daughter’s teacher just said to me at the race when we were talking about it, “Oh well as long as you are doing it for the right reasons.” HaHaHa. We laughed. No one loses weight to impress themselves. Anyhoo. I am also trying to grow out my bangs. Which is taking way longer than I want. But I was using her party as goal for that too. I figured if I could keep them longer, and survive the bad stage where they poke at my eyes, without cutting them, at least until then, I could probably make it the rest of the way to the long stage again. So far so good on that goal! I use headbands at work. I feel weird about my open face but half my patients can’t see me clearly anyway so who cares. As I always say, I look much better blurry.
Well I should wrap this up. Hours have been spent here. I swapped a few loads of laundry, but I need to fold all that crap and put it away and try to clean up this house a bit. I defiantly told the BF that I would have all the laundry done by the time he got home. I am so stupid sometimes when I am trying to be all smart. I think I hit all the major updates. No, wait…
Thursday was my daughter’s Spring Band Concert. Done. Today is the 8th grade dance. Exciting! We had Mother’s Day. I had to work. There was the annual Crawfish Boil my sister and her hubby have every year. Fun! Here’s a pic:
I have GOBS of bird pictures and wildlife in the backyard. The bird feeders are back. The fat squirrels are eating everything and making me mad. The hummingbirds are back too. I saw them. I have street money that I am still collecting. My niece graduated high school!! Congrats Jesse!! I have new things involving trucks with crazy stuff on them. And tires. Lots of tires. I don’t even know why. I probably have more random things that I can’t even think about because now I am trying to hurry and finish so I can do a fast clean sweep and get back to the computer. My son just texted. Geometry final is over. He’s one class away now from sophomore year. I need one last picture though to end this mish mash. And there are always more pictures. In my phone and on my desktop. Hmmm. How about superheroes? My kids are a daily reminder that you are never to old to build a blanket fort in your room to keep out the bad guys:
Or too old to goof around in Target. Hurry up mom, and take the picture!! Come on now…
I. Am. IronMan.
You won’t like me when I’m angry.
Saving the world one word at a time. “Mommmmmmm.”
“Come on already.” Later.
Stevie Pic #3
Not even going to comment. No time. Thank you Stevie! Your pictures are always good! Work now. More later.
Stevie Pic #2
Beautiful color here. Good eye my darling girl. This is pure Stevie work. Goes very nice with the above picture, don’t you think, my crusty lipped cousin?? Haha. Gotta work now! Later.
Stevie Pics!
She took the next few pics I will be posting. With her IPhone of course. I have to go to work, right now, but I don’t want to keep the same pictures, especially of some dandelions, on the front of this thing for days and days. Besides, I have endless pictures that she takes to use at a moment’s notice, so I could really go all lazy bones here and never post my own stuff again. She takes A LOT of pictures. Full credit to my sweet little girl! (Don’t worry cuz, I will get that lip balm picture up and in the books for posterity) Everyone have a great day! It is beautiful out here in the Midwest! 77 degrees and counting. Pity I will be indoors, but no one just hands me money for sitting at home typing words into the ether. Later.
One Whole Week Without Internet And This Was The Best I Could Come Up With
I know. But I am in a time crunch. Again. I had to work all weekend and now all week. But still, I need to waste some time here when I should be getting my uniform and showering. We really did not have internet. My kids were going crazy. No access to the public via the smart phones. At least not without using our GB’s. No XBox! That was the real tragedy for my son. Cut off from the gaming world forever! I could not pay bills or share all my random, excess thoughts and lame pictures. But after 3 visits from AT&T, it’s finally fixed. The inside guy came and determined it was the outside guys problem. Only because construction on one of our roads messed up the wiring that occurs half a mile away from your actual house. But only an outside guy can fix that. Then another inside guy has to come back and readjust all the little wires in your “inside” equipment box (which is actually outside bolted to your house) and finally get you running again because he didn’t connect all the stuff correctly the first time he was here. Human error all around. At least I got a 20 dollar discount/credit and it works good now, so whatever.
It’s been hot and cold and raining and sunny and windy in the last week. But yesterday was warm. 70-75 degrees. Today is even better. 80+. My little temp box says 84. Figures. I am bummed because I have to leave in 30 minutes and won’t get out of work until dark now. Boo hoo I know. All the daffodils are dead. All gone. They bloomed and now they are no more. Just green stalks where they used to be. I shall leave them as they are for awhile and then cut those down too. There’s the pic above. Below is the curtain hanging by the door as I went to go take the picture of the green leaves. I thought it looked kind of interesting. That’s all you get on a Tuesday. I’ll jump back in this posting game during the week as we go. Have a very wonderful day and enjoy some of that nice warm weather and sun if you can. Later.
I Suppose I Could Have Gone With Flood Flowers As A Less Creepy Alternative
The rain is over. The water is as high as it can get in this area now, with all the rivers cresting and reaching their flood points on Saturday and Sunday. The water should start receding and retreating, back into its proper channels, to lie in wait for the next big storm to arrive, and let it loose once again from its muddy shores. Poetic huh?
Reality check. We sit high on the block so we never have a lot of standing water, but my flower bed does get full and floats the timbers onto the sidewalk and onto the driveway. I just put them back in place over and over until the rain stops. Small problem. However, I might have created a bigger problem with my car when I drove through all that stupid water the other night, although I am desperately hoping not, because now it’s making a weird sucking or blowing noise near the engine, I think, that sounds like a fan, or a motor that’s constantly spinning, or something that is trying to suck or blow air under the metal box that is covering the actual engine. It almost sounds like a hose is disconnected, and creating extra wind noise, kind of like a vacuum does when the suction isn’t right, or when you’ve sucked up something that doesn’t quite fit in the tubes and it’s blocking the path to the debris chamber. At any rate, I need to get my tired, lazy bum self, up, yet again, and haul my ass, and the money drain, over to the repair shop for a quick, “Hey, can you listen to this and tell me how much it’s going to cost to fix?” early in the morning. Staying up and posting this is not helping my anxiety or bad feelings about this newest problem with the car. And I haven’t even gotten around to telling you the last few problems that have already occurred. I’ve hinted. I’ve teased. I have pictures to illustrate. But work, and time, are conspiring against me. There’s too much of one and not enough of the other. I even took more dangerous pictures on the expressway, in the rain, to add to my current backlog of exciting and entertaining, but foolish and irresponsible, life story posts.
I’m tired. I have a headache. I just took my blood pressure pill and I should go to bed. Because I am old. To beef up this posting I am including a few more pictures from the rain. They aren’t really good, but now I can file them under “used”. I will caption them up here: 1. The sky looking like crap to the North. 2. The muddy puddle, in the back lot, of our stick inventory. 3. Some of the really wet sticks, that used to be brown, but now look red, for some reason, hiding a bunny. (That one is a bonus, like one of those puzzle pictures.) See if you can spot the rabbit! Brain games! Later.
just shy of pretty 