Awww. 57 Degrees As The Car Drives.
It’s not really raining. And it’s not really 57 anymore. The temp is inching up again. And this wasn’t even today. I know that I should NOT be taking pictures, with my phone camera, while driving, on the expressway, in the rain. But I did. I saw the car ahead and sometimes you never know when you are about to drive past something cool. Be alert! The world needs more lerts! (That’s from an old poster I used to have about a billion years ago when I was young. It really stuck with me.) Anyway…it’s a picture I took and I really have no other use for it except to show my son and then delete it. So here it is, headlining a world famous blog on a semi-cloudy-sunny-sneaking-can’t-decide-if-it-should-be-dreary-or-not day. Man, I can really stretch out a sentence. Anyway anyway…
I’m about to go into the 3-part Tire Drama, I spoke of last night, told in HD Camera Phone Picture Quality Storytelling. That is a patented technique for my new posting style, basically more pictures so there can be less words, not successful so far, that I will let you adopt as your own for a small fee if you find it works for you too. Or just works at all. But here, you are getting it for freeeeeee….(Bedtime Story Style. Look it up.) Stay with me now, because, as usual, it will be a long and round-a-bout, drawn out, possibly all day and night, tale for the ages. In fact, you may not even see the thread or the connection in the beginning and will most likely forget the original idea for the story in the first place. That’s OK though. It’s Monday. And it’s Tax Day. I have a whole money post thing that I do. Truly. Today might be the day to update that, 3 years late, feature too. (Yes. 3. THREE. Years. Late.) It’s called “Found Money.” It’s real and it’s kind of interesting and cool, I think, but I am sooooo far behind. I have kept all this loose change, for 3 years, in different containers, (to tell each year apart), in my hall closet, without even tallying it all up! My whole family knows it’s there and just leaves it alone. FOR THREE YEARS! We even add the most current change to the most current container, and never disturb the previous ones. You know how when you live with crazy people, but you don’t realize that they are crazy, because you have never known them any other way, or even known any other people, for that matter, all up close and personal, until you spend time outside your small bubble of family, and suddenly realize that your normal is other peoples abnormal, but because you are deep in the crazy too, you just go along?? You know?? Well. Then you find that you have three years of loose change sitting in a closet that everyone is very careful not to move, or knock over and spill, or mix up, every single day, when they are just trying to get a towel out to take a shower. Thank you family!
So today may be our lucky day! The madness ends. Well, this one point of madness. Maybe. It’s not like I am counting that change yet. In fact, I haven’t even ended this long-ass post, and I have gotten so far off topic, and even started 2 new ones, maybe three, (I can work alot on very little) that I can’t even remember how I was going to end this thing. Tires. Money. Weather updates. Flowers. That’s four actually. And I really can’t (don’t) want to go anywhere right now anyway until I get my car back. Oh yeah. My car. The reason I don’t have it right now. That’s it. I found the start of breadcrumb trail! Lo and behold and the laundry shall never get done! More time a-wasting over here. Maybe I will just throw a load into the washer and switch the dryer real quick and then type some more. There’s no time schedule for crazy. I mean creativity. Later.
74 Degrees. Posting From The IPad.
Sitting outside enjoying the warm. Although the temp is starting to go back down again. Still high sixties, so I can stay here for awhile yet. I thought I would try and use my son’s technology to post faster and more efficiently. And outside! This keyboard is weird and keeps hitching on me. I got the title ok and I was even able to take that pic above and put it in here, but I seem to be having trouble with color, bolding, italicising, and even punctuation and spelling. Auto correct and my lack of understanding on how to highlight a word and change its appearance is really slowing me down. Good thing I can spell real good and grammertize correctly or this would be a mess. I think I need to stick with the laptop for now. I already lost this post once accidentally tapping the wrong button and using touch screen to try and zoom or whatever. Luckily the tech support for this site is smarter than me and auto saved my original draft. So here it is. Again. You wouldn’t have wanted to miss this stellar post I am sure. Besides all my good pictures are on the computer. The IPad is nice, but it’s awkward to hold and too big for my hands to take alot of pictures. I’m trying to capture a picture of the very red cardinal that is chirping loudly in the tree in front of me but I can’t seem to spot him. And I can’t keep maneuvering this big flat thing around the backyard. I look like an idiot and my butt crack keeps hanging out when I bend over, but I can’t pull my pants up because I’m afraid I’m going to drop this toy and break it if I don’t use two hands. The problems of the new world, I tell ya. OK I am done now. My fingers are actually kind of cold and my kids are going to be home soon and I want to have a drink so I can pack in more good time fun on my extra bonus free day off before they get home if you know what I mean and I think you do I am talking to everyone with kids that never seem to leave the house for longer than a school day but since you have to work anyway it doesn’t really matter wink wink end of long run on sentence. Prob TMI but maybe most people drifted off there in the middle of that thought like I did. I did give this sad, plain, unadorned post its own category. I creatively named it, “IPad Posts.” Like it even matters, separating them from the others. You can easily spot them because they look like boring crap. I don’t know what I am doing on this thing. I will learn. And I will return. Ooooooh. Drama. Later.
66 Degrees. And Flashback.
I don’t want to be repetitive and post another picture of my daffodils, so… So spring. So cliche. So here is a winter snow pic that my daughter took. I was just scrolling through all the shots she took at the height of our winter and this one is good. I hate to wait until it snows again. So enjoy the memory and the good fortune we share, to live in an area that changes seasons so dramatically and abruptly. FYI, the L/C belongs to me. (Low census.) Hopefully they don’t call and ruin my day off now. Gotta go and lose these kids for the afternoon. The BF is breathing down my neck to get out of the this house. Now. Later!
View From The Front Door
It’s creeping up out there! 61 degrees and rising! Sunny. Sunday. I may be off of work. Can’t call until after 12:30 to be sure. It’s always nice to have 2 days in row. But we take what we can get. Soak up it up people. Spring in our big city only lasts one day at a time. And usually in hours. Winter/Summer. Transition phase in progress! Later.
I Call It: Sitting On Patio With Coffee, Before Work, First Of The Year. Subtitle: Spring In Repose.
It’s Monday. It’s 67 degrees. It’s very windy. (Like, very windy. So much so, that I layed the basketball hoop-thing down because it was creaking and swaying quite loudly while I was sipping my coffee.) Also, one of my tree trunk branches seem to be rubbing in the high wind and making that “limb-falling” sound I have grown to know and dread every time I hear it outside of a Forest Preserve or designated woody area allocated to our world for walking and enjoying nature in its most natural of habitats, the places where all the trees can gather and hang together and lean and fall on each other, or the leafy ground, as they wish. NOT my backyard. Please! Can I get one fresh, new spring day without any tree droppings? Can I get an Amen? Hallelujah people. I am willing all the “high-air” objects to stay there today. Amen.
That’s a picture of the sky facing forward from my chair. Obviously you can’t see the fast clouds moving, but they are. And those are my daffodils. Right on time. In case I never said it before, except that I say it EVERY year, daffodils are my favorite flower. The most faithful of flowers. Hope and trust and loyalty. If a person could be a flower, I guess I would be a daffodil. We share the same qualities if you go by the “meanings of things”. Plus, they are so pretty. Or just shy of pretty…huh? Huh? See what I did there? And they sometimes smell good. Just like me. Yes, I said sometimes.
I have to go. Shower and work. The BF gets to be off because he got a flat tire. Lucky! But if you are reading this (when you really should be outside, though…come on people, it is gorgeous! Go out, then come back in and finish this) and you want to comment or send me your favorite flower with a meaning or just a quick word, I would love to hear it! Something to look at later tonight when I get home. And if you are really fancy and high-tech, you can send a pic. That would be cool! Alright, have a good one out there today. Stay on the ground and don’t let this wind carry you away! Later!
Day Quote
Kind of a cheat today. I wrote this down and really have no other reason to use it. And why can’t TV people be just as relevant as literature people? That’s right. They can! I live my life surrounded by randomness and false hope. But I will take inspiration where ever it comes from. P.S. It is beautiful out today. Almost 60 degrees again. These are my deepest thoughts: I truly have started to like my job, and I am getting wayyyy better at it, and I know we need money, but, if low census must be given…please let it be me. Although by typing this out loud I just jinxed myself. Better hit the showers. Enjoy the day! And the quote. That was, after all the point here. (Again, if you read back to my beginnings, you’ll see that I just typed the quote with little to no comment. Ha. Those were the days.) Later.
Ooops. Almost forgot to give photo credit to my daughter. That is one of her pics from Kentucky. She has many more that I mean to include here. She’s really got an eye for this. Creativity running in the family. Later later.
Words are the first step on the road to deeds.
—Liz Lemon
Happy March 32nd!
Just kidding. There is no snow. What a jokester I am. I actually took current, up-to-date, real-time pictures of the backyard and that table, to show you what the outside really looks like right at this moment. 5 pm Central time. Midwest America. It’s not warm today. (We only get the stuttering sixties at this point in the year.) It’s back in the 40’s again and it feels cold. But it’s sunny. Warning! The pictures below are uncut and unedited (for time) and are not very pretty. The yard is a sticks and stumps mess like a graveyard for bark parts or the lost world of tree limbs and branches. And all that sunshine blazing down is just lighting up the debris like a Christmas tree. Look here! Crap attack! You will NEVER be free of the Park Forest Tree! That may be a little dramatic, but you really have to live here to know why that is so scary. And true. Read back a bit on this site or just click over on the right there to “Tree Trouble” and you can see what I am talking about. I dare say I may have had an above average amount of bad luck in the breaking/cracking/ falling down department of tree instant removal and upheaval. They like to fall in my backyard. And they like to fall slowly. One piece at a time. Every few months or so. We started out with 3 very large 50 year old trees with many many branches limbs sticks and leaves. Now we have 2 tall “trunks”, at best, that still give me a run for the money when the wind blows too hard. They barely have proper branches on them anymore. Maybe a few limbs, that are very high up and thin, but that still sway on a windy day like drunk gymnasts trying to land on the roof of the house if they could only get the right arc. It’s ridiculous and my own private natural ghost story. The Tale of The Malevolent Maple Tree! The Evil Box Elder! The Horror of the Hackberry! The Horror of the Hackberry is right. That’s the tree ID that is presently lounging around all over the backyard in various shapes and sizes, providing a fine winter home for all kinds of bunnies and squirrels and skunks and probably opossums and racoons. I think those last two actually live up in the tree, but I can’t be sure and I do not have time to check. I see I have gone on and on like I always do and this was supposed to be quick and fast and funny. April Fool joke and all that.
Anyway my original point was to mention that I had been looking back at some of my earlier postings (4 years in March!) and I was pretty funny if I do say so myself. Go ahead and read some vintage posts if you have some time. You will not be disappointed. I also noticed that I had written about the BF’s birthday at that time and even posted about wrapping his present in the Jewel Foods sales paper. Which is what I did again this year! I thought I was so clever. Turns out I am clever. And I have been for at least 4 years, maybe more! Ha. I took a new present pic:
It’s like a birthday/posting/cheap present wrapping flashback. Now, the BF is on his way and we are going to dinner and celebrating the big 4-0 one day early. Presents and cake when we get back. Yes. I made a cake. He doesn’t even know! It’s his fav I think, at least of the cakes that I make. It’s the “Better Than Sex” cake that I also mentioned many years ago. That cake was only presented in a written description posting. This year I have pictures of the process and the results. That cake weighed 10 pounds I think. I will weigh this one before we cut it and let you know. Ok. Better go.
Thank you to all my new friends and followers! I appreciate the time it takes to find or stumble on something new, give it a few minutes to sink in and then actually do the work to “like” and “follow”. I mostly “like” back and “follow” when I get here. Which as you have seen from these last 2 days is like, once every 2 months. So sad. And I like hearing my own voice and seeing my own words. I think that is also pretty obvious if you have spent even one minute of time reading just one of my posts. They get “wordy”.
Ok. Really now. Here’s the real-time pics of today. Enjoy the evening and I’ll be back. I see some long spring days ahead of me, typing deep into the dark warm nights. Later.
Spring is Sprung. 61 on 61.
That would be 61 days since I posted last. That’s really bad. Does anyone but me even click on this site anymore? I seem to be my only audience these days and I am getting tired of looking at that blue sky picture. And so much has happened in those 61 days. And the 42 days before that. Time flies. Believe it. But of course I don’t have time right now to type it all.
Anyway, the other 61 is the the temp outside. Yep. Chicago. 61. March 31. It’s pretty nice. And it’s Easter! Happy Egg Day or Ham Day or Jesus Day. However each of you beautiful people celebrate. It’s Work Day for me. Not considered a “holiday” in the med world, at least not the med world I work in, but money is money. I’m just going to enjoy the weather on the drive to work and be grateful that low census was put on hold for the weekend.
My kids are in Kentucky as they usually are this time of year and the BF is just chilling at home, waiting for Tuesday (April 2) to creep around, and change his 39 year old ass into 40. Welcome to the dark side honey. Finally. It gets depressing being the only old lady around these parts. One of my CNA’s keeps reminding me that I am the same age as her mother. I’m like, could you please stop telling people that?? Anyway I am a bad GF because I have to work, and I did not plan a super surprise for this special start to the birthday journey that takes you onto the path of old age. And wisdom. Let’s not forget all the wisdom we get when we flip the big digits. He’s not complaining or anything, but I still feel bad. I did get him a present though. It’s been here for a week. AND it’s wrapped, and sitting on the kitchen table taunting him! I’m off tomorrow, so dinner and a present to open on your last day of being able to check the “under 30” box on documents and survey forms. I’ll get him with a surprise 41. They never see it coming!
But I need to go. Now. My uniform is dry and I need to shower. Here is a pic from my daughter that she sent from Kentucky where the air is actually colder. And it was raining. More posts to come. I hope. 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.
Pink Spider!
You will just have to trust me that this pink-tinged photo of a Wolf Spider is better than my cardboard “cure” stand that I was going to post. Of course I have more pictures of spiders. They crawl all over the place right now. And they’re big. Giant one in the bathroom trying to sneak along the bathtub edge; super fast, rounder, black one trying to dash across the living room floor from the safe couch to the safer fish tank spot; bold and sassy one sitting right on top of the counter next to the paper towels trying not to move, I swear it felt like a spider stand-off; and of course old faithful here, and most likely a hundred or so of his/her relatives, that seem to camp out near the back door when the weather starts turning cold. They grow bigger and bigger and try to build a web across the patio almost every night. As long as they stay away from our “walking zone” we let them be. You have to respect the kind of nature that can survive and thrive in these harsh times. Besides, these kind of spiders aren’t poisonous and they don’t hurt people intentionally. Heart attack inducing creepiness and the ability to jump-lunge at threats or rear up on some of their back legs to look menacing, not withstanding. I definitely don’t want one on me, but you know that spiders do crawl on you at night sometimes while you are sleeping and you don’t even know it! So think about that tonight when you are all tucked in and feeling cozy! Also, it’s a major heat wave going through today and tomorrow, so all the creepy crawlers should be peeking their heads out from wherever they have been hiding in your house to see what the hell is going on. Why is it 80 damn degrees again?!? Let’s walk around this nice warm house tonight and see if we can all figure it out! At the same time! More soothing bedtime tales! I just scooped up one of those long, skinny, brown, caterpillar like bugs, that curl up into a spiral, bulls-eye shape when you touch them, last night after work. He was just scootching across the kitchen floor, going somewhere. I nearly stepped on him because he wasn’t there when I walked through, like, 10 minutes before. Late nights on a slab house. Yeek. (Throw me a comment if you happen to know what they are called. I used to know, but I am too time crunched to look it up right this minute.) Maybe I will post all my creepy-crawly pics the next few days…it’s still pink October, but it is getting close to Halloween and my fav holiday, Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), and I have alot of “natural” decorations all around my house. Outside and inside. What can I say? I’m kind of a lazy cleaner and those spiders are relentless in their web building! And if you are looking up into my corners instead of focusing on my fabulous, engaging, sparkling company, then you deserve to see the cobwebs! Anyway, here is one more fun fact before I hit the showers and go to work: The debate rages on in the internet world but…people, in general, swallow about 3 to 8 spiders in their lifetime! Some say 3 spiders per year get swallowed up. Some say maybe 8 in a lifetime. The figures vary because no one can really know exactly how many spiders you may be munching on. I believe it is possible, and here is why: because some people leave an open glass of water on their nightstand and drink from it through the night. A spider crawls onto the cup, falls in, and cannot get out. You wake up, you drink, you feel something, but you are half-asleep, and it’s not like you turned the light on to see, did you?? Nope. You swallow, you go back to sleep. That’s one. Now repeat every few years. There you go. And I know for a fact that my daughter has already eaten at least 3 spiders, because she used to grab them right off the floor when she was small and eat them! She was so fast I couldn’t stop her. They were small too. And slow, apparently. She never got sick and she seems fine and normal today. I mean people do eat them as actual food in some countries so it’s not crazy. But I have to go now. Everyone get out and enjoy our last 2 days of sunny warmth. And when you go to bed tonight, keep your mouth closed and a cap on your water bottle. Sweet dreams! Later.
just shy of pretty 