Thanks Stevie! For #4.
My next favorite thing to take pictures of after birds and flowers and trees. The sky! Or more accurately: Clouds in the sky.
I saw this big space, just wide open in front of me, while I was driving to work yesterday, but I didn’t have the time or place to stop and take the picture. The sky is so amazing when all those clouds are up there, looking like they just got thrown across the blue, right in front of you, just waiting for you to arrive. You can see the curve of the Earth and almost feel the world turning under your feet, and you can imagine, for that one moment, that the road, and this life, can go on forever.
I can not be the only one who sees all that blue and just wants to keep driving until the highway ends and the water begins. If you have ever driven to the ocean, and I mean, driven straight on a road, for miles and miles, towards the end of dry land; Watching the sky change and seem to open up as you get closer and closer; And the air changes and the wind blows salty through your open window and you just know you are at the end of the world; Then you probably know what I mean.
But maybe that’s just me. I daydreamed of running all the way to work. And then I went in and forgot all about it until right now when Stevie sent me this to post here. All that from one photo. Pretty amazing. Thank you my lovely girl.
Stevie Pic #3
Not even going to comment. No time. Thank you Stevie! Your pictures are always good! Work now. More later.
My Lips Are Chapped!
As promised! You want. You got. Now go buy and tell me that it works good. Today you might need it. My thermometer reads 82 degrees. And I have to go to work. Again. It better be nice tomorrow too so I can enjoy one day off of beauty. Or at least temperate weather. I even took the pic all artsy fartsy like just for my cuz. No, they are NOT paying me. I wish. Just so you know, I am wasting all kinds of shower-work-prep-time just to post this one extra thing today. And obviously wasting more time talking about it. Sheesh. Make sure you check out Stevie’s flower picture below. It’s quite pretty. Just like her! And it goes with the blue-ish, dusky theme we have going here today. Enjoy the weather all! 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.
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.
Gutter Love 3.
Before I forget. I will keep you updated as the newest pictures from the gutters come in. But now it’s time to end for the night. I have lots more to post. I really do. But I am tired and I have to take my car to the shop in the AM. That story alone is worth three posts. Seriously. It’s part of the “lots more” I was talking about. I even have them outlined in my mind, and on little blue post-it notes, with the pictures to match, all queued up in my folders on the desktop. And wait until you see what my phone camera can still do. I have some killer flower pictures that you will not believe and do not want to miss. Yeah. I typed “killer” to describe flower pictures. They are good though. I was actually surprised when I copied them onto the laptop. I even sucked in my breath a little at the clarity. Sometimes the light and angle is just right and you get perfection. But you can judge for yourself in the morning. You all have a good night now. Sleep sweet.
Gutter Love.
Number 2. In the new series I will be featuring every time my girl takes a picture of the rain gutters doing their job. The first one I posted was from Kentucky, (click here to see) and even though the shot looked familiar, I didn’t realize that she had already taken a picture of our gutter pouring water here at home. And then when I looked, we actually have three separate shots, thus inspiring this most current “new feature.” A thing I like to roll out every other day and then never speak of or address again. I’m even giving it its own category. Of course. Enjoy while it lasts. Later.
I’m On An Adjusted Sleep Schedule!
That title is from New Girl, the TV show. I won’t go into why that’s funny because, 1. I AM on an adjusted sleep schedule!; 2. It’s late, and I’m trying to hurry and type fast; 3. I am lazy and don’t want to; 4. If you don’t watch the show you won’t think it’s funny anyway; and 5. Watch the show!; but 6. It’s probably too late, because the end of the world is fast approaching and the show airs on Monday, and this is Thursday, and I think you missed your last chance earlier in the week; and 7. Major sad face all around 😦 Emoticon. Finite. The End.
That’s our chalk family portrait done by my daughter over the summer in the driveway. I was trying to find just-the-right-picture for this close-to-the-end post and as I was browsing through my many, many, many bird pics, I saw this one, and bonus(!), it looks like we are all waving. Waving goodbye! It’s perfect!
So I don’t really think that the world is going to end in 24 hours or so, but, if it does, I will tell you this: One, I am avoiding Facebook like the plague. I can’t even imagine what people are posting about it. I mean the whole 12/12/12 thing was bad enough. I hope it’s mostly jokes. But I will never know. Two, I have the day off. Thursday. So technically I get to spend the entire last day on Earth (provided the world is ending at midnight going into the 21st) with my family! We will all die in our sleep I guess, in the house, or something…I’m not sure how it will end. Quickly I hope. I don’t want to live in a zombie world. Too old. Too tired. Isn’t the whole zombie thing played out? Like vampires? Three, If the world keeps spinning and spills into Friday, I’m good until, like, 1:30 at least on the 21st. Then I have to go to work. My kids will be at school. The BF will be at work. All of us scattered around Illinois. That would be sad. But, Four, Even sadder would be if the world crawls its sick self all the way until midnight on Friday. The kids and BF will be snug in their beds and I’ll be driving on the expressway. Blah humbug.
At any rate, this is something I wanted to sneak in, just in case. Thanks for reading. Thanks for checking every day, whoever you are, and keeping me active with approx 10-20 reader “hits”. Or the same reader over and over. Either way. Even if you were just randomly searching and came across the site and stopped for a minute just to scan the words and liked even one sentence, I thank you. Also: I love my kids. And the BF. My family. My friends. And that feeling of peace and comfort and total relaxation that I get at 8 am when I am laying in my bed, on my side, covered to the neck in a heavy, warm, down comforter, eyes closed, body loose, about to go back to sleep, after getting the kids up at 6ish to send them to school, and after going to bed around 2-ish (3-ish or even 4-ish, like tonight) because I stay up too late after work playing stupid app games on my phone and because I’m not tired. Whiny whiny whiner. That feeling right before falling totally asleep again is really the best feeling. Like, I could die on the spot and not care if that’s how it felt, kind of feeling. Deep sigh. Then shake it off, because yuck! Too much. Too ghastly for tonight. Wasn’t my intention to make this, possibly the last post, so long and wordy. I can’t even reign it in near the end. And I need to wrap this up seriously and get to bed already.
I actually have a plan for the day and it involves doing, and completing, every single Christmas thing I need to have done before the big day, especially since I have to work right up until we do our family Christmas. That would be Sunday. I am off Monday, Christmas Eve, and that’s when I wanted to do my personal family x-mas. Just me and the BF and the kids. And the Sears repair man. Oh yeah. Did I mention that my clothes dryer took a big crap a few days ago and that I also have to go do laundry tomorrow, at an outside facility (outside the house, not actually outside outside)? No? Well it did. And I do. And the repair guy is coming on Christmas Eve morning to fix it (I hope). Sucks for him because he has to work. I am only off on Monday because it’s my regular day off, otherwise I would be working too. That would have been a fun family x-mas to remember. The kids are going with their dad, later in the Christmas Eve afternoon, the way they always do, and since I have to work on Christmas anyway (First time. EVER. In my whole life. I was soooo spoiled with that office job) I won’t see them again until I get home on x-mas or the next morning. On Wednesday. Just another day. Also a day that I have to work. No more winter breaks or office shut downs for me. Oh well. That’s why everything has to be done tomorrow.
But don’t get the wrong idea, I am not complaining. Big whip, a broken dryer and no time to buy a present? Boo hoo, cry me a river. I know that I already have what is most important in my life right now and I won’t waste any time fretting over something like wet clothes and a botched up day. My kids are with me. I have a fab BF. And a rockin’ set of family and friends. I have a pretty decent job, some money to spend, and a house to live in. It’s good enough. I think I already said that earlier in this Armageddon novel, but it bears repeating all the same.
I also have a list and a plan and a general direction of which stores and in what order and what needs to be done in my house. Like, all of it. I dragged all the decorations out into the living room, 3 big boxes worth, and put out about 4 of them. 4 single decorations. 5 if you count the tree. It has lights and a star. And one decoration. It’s a green glitter glass ball ornament that my daughter got from school. I thought, at first, it would be the starting point. Then I thought, well, we can just have the one ornament, like it’s a “thing”, and move it around every day. Then I had another thought: We can just have one ornament. And it can just stay where it’s at. Bottom left when you look at the tree, hanging off the lowest fake branch. Picture proof coming right up.
Anyway I really do have to end this. It’s almost 4 am Chicago time. No, now it is 4 am. Almost 4:30. Tick tock. The weather is supposed to take a big fat ugly turn in a few hours and dump our first sticky snowfall on us here. But right now it is pouring rain. Pouring. Like non-stop. And it has been since I left work at 11. That is 5 hours of fun rainfall just soaking in and pooling up all over the cold-ass ground. They say the temps are going to drop, and the rain will turn to snow. That’s good right? Snow covered ice slicks all over everywhere. Damn Midwest. The BF has work. The kids have school. My son is sick and has had a 102 degree temp for 2 nights in a row now. He hasn’t had a fever in years and years. But he went to school with that temp down to a cool 101 on Wednesday for finals and he has to go again today for more finals. He’s tough. Both my kids are tough. But I still wake them up every day for school because I can.
Here’s to all the hard working, staying up late, getting it done people I write all this crap for. Have a very merry Pre-Christmas and Weekend-Before the holiday. I will try and write more words in the next few hours and days to come if time and the universe allow. I apologize for all the “likes” used in conversational phrasing and the numbering thing/gimmick. I also used way too many commas, parentheses, and italics. I just can’t help myself sometimes. I love love love English and punctuation! What a nerd! Thanks for hanging out with me anyway. Peace, and that picture as promised. Later.
It’s Your Birthday! It’s Your Birthday! (One Week Later)
For a girl who cannot take enough pictures of herself, she would not let me get even one picture of her for her birthday. This is the best I could capture, taken under extreme protest. And she looked so cute in her new birthday pj”s from her grandma. Teenagers. Just when you think you know a girl, the 14 year old life truck hits them hard and you can’t push them out of the way fast enough. Sigh. Anyhoo. This is my girl. She turned 14 a week ago on the 21st. The day before Thanksgiving. And a Wednesday. So there wasn’t a lot we could do by way of party or celebration. She had a few dinners and saw a few people, spaced out over the week, so I think it actually worked out better. Her birthday lasted way longer than most. And here is one more day, and a post just for her, to acknowledge the joyous occasion of her birth! She is fully entrenched in teenageville now. And what you can’t see behind the pillow is her new best friend, I-Phone. I hope that little device doesn’t put out any serious UV radiation rays, because if it does we are looking at a generation of young adults that are going to have major face skin cancer in a few years. And probably some crippling finger arthritis too. They hold it so close to their faces. Pushing those tiny keypads with their poor little crampy fingers and thumbs. Tip of the day: Wear sunscreen while operating your mobile device. Slather it on good and thick, especially over the face and neck area. Just in case. And maybe give those hands a break every few hours. Extend those digits outward. All that cracking you hear when you first do it is not always a good thing! Flex and extend. Flex and extend. Jazz hands. Whatever it takes. Alright I need to wrap this up. Shower and work. Must make more money to support the daughters other obsession: fake nails. Oh yes. We buy too many packages of this addiction in a box. I think that I will start posting all the nail work that Stevie has dedicated the rest of her waking time to creating. It will be very easy to make this the new winter feature on this site because she takes a picture every time she sticks any new nails onto her hands, which is practically every day. I am not exaggerating. Stevie’s Nails. Watch for it. In conclusion:
Happy happy birthday! I love you my beautiful, little girl! Hope the day and week and weekend were the best you have ever had! At least until next year! XO Mom.
just shy of pretty 