So When You’re Near Me, Darling Can’t You Hear Me? S.O.S.
The love you gave me, nothing else can save me, S.O.S.! When you’re gone, how can I, even try, to go on?
Oh the drama. September is over. My favorite month. I’m going to bookend this month with one last post. I think I hit the significant dates though: 2, 10, 30. Hmmm. Maybe I should play the lottery. That would be a nice October. Anyway, I really am bummed that September is over because now that means we have to get ready for the long, brisk, shuffle into winter and start praying for an early spring.
There is football though. And I was contemplating just making this site a homage to football players and their personal bodies, you know, muscles, hair, bootys, etc., and of course their teams and stats and all that, blah blah, along with a feature like, “Arms Of The Week” or something along those lines, where I could feature a player of the week. Body wise, it’s still Clay Matthews for me.
But for pure NFL power, no one beats Peyton Manning.
He is my all time favorite, and he’s practically a super hero this year. I think they fixed him up with bionic parts the year before and he needed last season to reboot, like a RoboCop, except for football, where he is throwing passes like bullets. He is a man on fire. And of course I have missed every single one of his games so far due to a little thing I like to call, work. It’s all work it seems like. Except that’s not really true either. I have done lots of stuff, and this month literally feels like it flew past on fast forward, and I did not type one word about it here. Too busy living I guess.
The truth is, I feel adrift in this bloggy world. And kind of in real life. No direction. I have potential work changes on the horizon, but I really can’t say anything yet. One, because it’s all confidential and nurse-type stuff. And two, I really don’t know anything beyond a couple of interviews and the occasional reference to the job at hand.
At any rate, I will find my way. I always do. And while I’m waiting, today in particular, since I was off, I made my daughters favorite “big-pot” meal: Jambalaya. It’s a mix of many recipes and my own spin, but I try to stay as true as I can to my oldest, and best-good friend Beverly’s, original recipe that she kind of gave me many many years ago. She said it’s not really a write-down kind of thing as it is made in her family the old fashioned way. One person knows how and just makes it. She’s true blood Creole and French from the swamps of Louisiana. And when I made it for her to judge my skills, she tasted it and said, and I quote, “Hmmp. Not bad.”
I will take it. Also, I have been drinking since 2. While cooking. And listening to really really loud music. It helps while you are cutting up the 50 ingredients that this meal requires in order to be, “not bad”. My drink of choice was Redd’s Apple Ale. Here’s a pic with the chicken, because everyone likes the chicken.
This is the apple beer with the really stupid commercials where they throw an apple at someone’s head. Terrible. But soooo tasty. Seriously. I wanted Bloody Mary’s but I forgot to buy the V8 when I was at the store. And we already had the beer. FYI, if you like apple juice, you will like this beer. It tastes like alcoholic apple juice with a bit of beer flavor. I have also tried Angry Orchard apple ale, or, I think it’s called hard cider. That’s even more apple juicy and less beery. I have no picture of that one though. You will have to take my word. Not bad. See how I wrapped that right up? The BF is home now and I am cooking up a little garlic bread to go with the Jambalaya, so I need to get off this.
Oh, one more thing. Thank you loyal readers, followers, or general browsers! Whoever you are. Even though I haven’t posted but 3 little blurbs all month, I still have 10-20 people checking in and hoping for something great every day. I really don’t know how that is possible, but one of these times I hope I can deliver on this optimistic, anonymous vote of confidence. The BF is opening wine so I really really have to go.
New kind we are trying tonight. I picked it because of the 2010 year. I looked it up. It was a good year for wine in general. I will let you know. However, I probably won’t be able to post anything later due to “intake” issues, but there is always tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow. Your only a day away….Cheesy Broadway ending. Later.
Before The Fireworks
Sitting in the middle of Illinois waiting for night. Ate too much smoked meat, drank too much whiskey and beer, and sucked down too many very strong, very strong, jello shots. And that’s not really even true. I paced myself for the long evening, but still felt sick over night. I even managed to drink 2 bottles of water during this Fourth Fest mess. The food combo and combo alcohol is probably what turned my stomach. I should have eaten less grease and stuck to one beverage. No actual vomiting occurred, in case you should be thinking that I am some lightweight who can’t hold her liquor. I can drink the alcohol. I just shouldn’t. Anyway, we saw “home” fireworks until about midnight. This town we were in basically has the residents blowing off commercial grade fireworks for a lot of hours. We also saw a lot of those paper lantern things. No really good pictures because the displays were too unpredictable and I only had my phone. I was a mere spectator for this show. But I will put up my one blurry, bursting picture (if you squint and stand back, way back, from the screen you can kinda see the firework thing) and move on to the usual daily routine. Which includes work for me. The BF is off and the kids are still in Kentucky, and none of those little bitches at my job would work for me today. Wah wah wah. No one ever wants to give up their Friday. I’m hoping for a quick night and no admits. I really, really, really, need to win the lottery. Oh well. Until then.
Warrior Dash Results plus Shameless Self Promotion (Subscribe To Me! Link is on right…)
As expected, I did not win the Warrior Dash. It’s ok. I kind of figured when I didn’t hear my name called on Saturday. And now looking at my dismal hour plus finish…haha.
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Really, it was over an hour. But not because I couldn’t do it. Mostly because I got stuck in an obstacle jam at the jumping Wall (not enough space for all of us to go over in a faster fashion) But I’m not complaining. I don’t really care anyway about the time. The whole thing was a blast!
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I’m still finding pics and video on the internet from it. Looking at everyone’s stuff I already found us in a few. I’ll post as we see. We still have one more camera that my brother-in-law took with thru the mud and gunk!
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On the Facebook site, you can really see some of the obstacles in other people’s pictures. The Swamp looks particularly gross and muddy, and the Hills look fun even thought they were killer. Up, down, up, down. I put that the Forest Trail Hills were my fav, but those grass hills are a close second!
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Well, back to the real world now. I have to go register the kids for school and hit the trail with my son! The road calls.
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This is the NEW FEATURE post, begging…that I typed last night while most normal people were sleeping. Didn’t want you to miss it! And you wouldn’t…if…??? And that’s all I’ll say.
Here is another random phone camera pic because I like to have them on the site!
I WAS the Warrior!!
For a beautiful, brilliant, running, jumping, climbing, crawling, soggy, dirty, swampy, muddy, fire-singing moment in time, I was one with all the elements!
WE were one with all the elements. Myself, my sister and her husband got down and dirty and we are so over the WARRIOR DASH!!
We started nervous–didn’t know what to expect–but once we got into the Wave Gate, we were READY!
Just a fun day of goofing around on a 4 mile obstacle course with 2000 of our closest friends!
We didn’t win but we weren’t last and more importantly, we didn’t get HURT!
We got pictures. We got video. We WILL be back next year!
I will post what we have right now and please check back for the video!
Warriors Unite! We kicked extreme ass! See you in 2010!
This was our starting Wave Gate
This is everyone!
Fire. Really.
Muddy???
Just a little bit...
Rinsing off enough to get in the car
Please stay tuned. As soon as I get the video downloaded it will be UP! In the meantime, check out the rest of these pics featuring crazy costumes!
Monday. All is well in Tree-velle
Mother Nature saw fit to spare my trees and me this year of throwing off any more of their limbs into my back yard. Maybe it’s because I already have a forest of limbs ready to cut up; or maybe I’ve been extra good; or maybe, the Rotation of the Earth, Atmosphere, and Global Warming just couldn’t muster up enough high velocity wind to knock any down this weekend; (???) Whatever the reason, I feel relieved. It takes me all summer to get rid of what is already there…just in time for next year….but we won’t go there right now.
As for the other Mother…me…my day rocked from top to bottom and is rolling on today. Sounds corny. Looks corny typed but I’m having writing issues. I’m working on it with a Miller Lite and some leftover pizza. Stay until the end of the post, it should be real good and sappy.
Where I left off: Sat. PM.: Waiting for Mom and sister. They arrived, and we went to the restaurant. The food was not as great as it could have been for the money, but it was gigantic! Please click on the food item to see a snapshot of said entreé:
QUEEN FILET w/ GIANT VEGETABLES
The Dirty Martini, I had, however, was excellent. Skyy Vodka and Bleu Cheese Olives–(yum–not gross like you would think)
We gave the Mom our present–digital camera–now everyone on Earth finally has one!
I gave my sissy her little present: CLICK HERE!! She’s so silly.
We ate, we drank, we went home. I went to bed.
Sunday: Kids are delivered to me by their other Aunty (Dad’s side) who had a 6-month Halloween Party–fully decorated, scary movies, costumes, etc…she’s a bit of a loony…Saturday night. I was immediately given my Mother’s Day presents; two gifts my children could barely keep a secret since buying them for me on Thursday night.
Drum-roll please….a Candy/Chocolate Pizza… AND… a Toaster!
It doesn’t look like much typed out, but believe me, when I unwrapped the big box handed to me by my son, a toaster was the LAST thing I was expecting to see. I laughed so hard I was crying. The reason it was funny is because the toaster we have, (had), just started toasting weird this past week, like Monday. It burned one side and didn’t cook the other. My son was not happy. He likes perfectly toasty toast. But he never even said anything. Then 6 days later–there it was: New toaster! It’s ingenious. His poor girlfriend/wife.
Anyway, that picture is below. I was told that I keep posting the same pics so I need to get more creative. Thanks boyfriend! Helpful criticism is always appreciated.
After the presents we went to the Monee Reservoir in Monee, IL and fished for a few hours. It was windy and chill and kept trying to rain on us. The BF is the only one that caught a fish. Picture here: BLACK CRAPPIE
We over-enthusiastically bought two boxes of NightCrawlers (in the fridge–yuk) and a dozen minnows. The guy gave us alot more though, so we took them home and fed them to the Oscars. An exciting day for all of us!
Then we motored on over to El Famous Burrito. Very delicious guacamole and the BEST Chicken Quesadilla. It’s not on the menu so you have to ask for it specifically–but it’s the best thing they have there! Especially if you get it later in the day, with all the soaked chicken in that magic red grease juice. My kids love it with fries…
Night time. Bed time. School time…moving into Monday AM: As soon as my kids were dropped off I zoomed over to the post office to pick up my very important Certified Letter. I missed the damn thing by a few hours on Saturday:
My acceptance into Nursing School for Fall!! Thank god. Four more semesters and I’m done. Four more really tough semesters. I’ve been going to school part-time, work in the day, school at night, for the last three years to get to this point…the adventure begins….
Kids, if you are reading this…go to school RIGHT AWAY. How ever you can get there! Do not get a full time job (unless it’s like 100K +), get married, have 2 kids, get divorced, turn 40 and THEN decide that maybe school is the way to go. It’s do-able when you are older but easier when you are younger. Please, please, please, listen to me!!
So, I got my letter. I’ve read and re-read the thing 100 times. Took pictures. Stared at it while waiting for the BF’s Mom at the doctor’s office, and thought about it the whole time I ran around the Forest Preserve Trail today; 3.6 miles of happiness. Not SO hard to get around this time…
And here I am. Finishing this. Beer is almost done. One last drink….It might not seem like much, to some, but it is for me. I’m going to be a nurse.
Here is my playlist for the day. Used it today. It’s called, “Pretty Beautiful.”
That’s just about right.
Tuesday EFS Off The Wagon…or something like that
This is Day 7 of the second week, but not really. Since we fell off the wagon for the weeekend, not completely, but we WERE hanging over the side dragging the ground pretty good; we decided to extend week 2 thru Friday. Thereby starting Week 3 on Saturday and bringing us in line with the BFL system we had begun previous to this Extreme Fat Smash idea. Now that that’s all straight…
The point for today is to say, I exercised and followed the diet up until 1 pm or so when I decided to partake of some fabulous beer cheese dip left over from the party on Sunday. OK. It wasn’t really left over. It never got put out. Silly Me.
My brother-in-law makes THE best Beer-Cheese Dip in the WHOLE world. I don’t know exactly what it is and I don’t know what’s in it. But I do know that you eat it with pretzels and it is awesome! Some people will tell you that it’s good with other crunchy things like Triscuits, Pita Chips, or Melba type cracker things. But they would be WRONG. Pretzels are the only way to go. Now, he had some at his Crawfish Boil the day before, and I begged him to bring some to my party the next day. He doesn’t make it all the time so it’s like a big thing for me when he does. In the spirit of brotherly love, he packed some up, WITH pretzels, and drove an hour to our house to have it for the b-day party. It was even still cold! Then I slyly put it in the fridge and there it sat until everyone left. But he saw thru my deception. He noticed and commented on how tricky that was and how he kind of wanted some…OMG! I totally forgot! I meant to put it out but there was so much confusion when everyone got here and I had all this other stuff…and then when I remembered it was too late…blah blah blah….Yeah Right! He wasn’t buying it. But he was kind and let me keep it anyway. I did give back the pretzels though.
So, long story short, I ate some of that most delicious Beer-Cheese Dip this afternoon after my workout. My own private stock! I did the work at the gym to allow for the discrepency. And I didn’t eat alot. Just enough. Got to have some for tomorrow! Or later with Beer. Actually no, My bro-in-law also made a Louisiana Punch concoction to go with the New Orleans theme they had rolling for the Crawfish Boil so he brought that over too. Add just a bit more vodka and you got yourself a party in a glass! I throw on the beads we all got, close my eyes, and its like I’m in the Big Easy. Well, not really, but it’s the perfect segway into my Music List for the Day!
In honor of my most beloved Brother-In-Law and his Beer-Cheese Dip and my happiness over having it, I have dedicated the list to him today.
It’s all about New Orleans, Beer, Cheese and Whiskey. Please take a Drink from the “Big Easy: Beer Cheese Whiskey“ List. Right below here!
(FYI–it’s a little country music heavy–we aren’t haters but we like more variety—strangely enough alot of country music has to do with drinking and the South! How ’bout that??)
Thanks J. You Rock!
Scroll Down…NOW!
Big Easy: Beer Cheese Whiskey List
1. Proud Mary / Ike & Tina Turner
2. One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer / George Thorogood & The Destroyers
3. Chicken Fried / Zac Brown Band
4. Whiskey In The Jar / Metallica
5. Before He Cheats / Carrie Underwood
6. Big Bad John / Jimmy Dean
7. Me And Bobby McGee / Janis Joplin
8. Boot Scootin’ Boogie / Brooks & Dunn
9. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend / Miranda Lambert
10. Have A Drink On Me / AC/DC
11. Delta Dawn / Tanya Tucker
12. Dry Town / Miranda Lambert
13. All Summer Long / Kid Rock
14. The Girl’s Gone Wild / Travis Tritt
15. What’s Your Mama’s Name / Tanya Tucker
16. Lonesome, On’ry And Mean / Travis Tritt (tribute to Waylon)
17. King Of New Orleans / Better Than Ezra
18. Whiskey River / Willie Nelson
19. City Of New Orleans / Arlo Guthrie
20. House Of The Rising Sun / The Animals
just shy of pretty 