Channeling Red Forman...

If you have never watched That 70's Show the title of this post will likely elude you. Unless you watch this:

***FYI-the word "Ass" is used repeatedly in the clip below....just lettin' ya know***

I would love to introduce my foot to the woman driving the white SUV who forced me to pull off on to the shoulder of the road to avoid a head on collision. She was passing several vehicles in the north bound lane...illegally...and I was in the south bound lane. Thanks a ton you rude thoughtless wench...hope you get a big fat ticket for reckless driving from a policeman who is a big Red Forman fan.

On a lighter note...I am on my way to the school to do Career Day. I will be speaking to all three classes of 5th and 3rd graders. Well "speaking" might be overstating...I will be explaining how cool it is to be a SAHM who designs web pages for $. I did promise the kids not to go in a bath robe...my work attire. However, I have been playing with Photoshop...resulting in some really goofy pics of the FlyingMonkeys. Y'all cross your fingers....

BadKitty and KillerBees

Lately the dogs have been just loosing their minds at night. Barking at something or someone in the woods behind the house. I went to our Hunters to discuss the possibility of poachers...

Turns out we do have one...a giant, deadly feline poacher. The Hunters told me that we have a panther that is 6 feet from the tip of it's tail to its nose.

What! Aren't they those big cats at the zoo behind the giant fence to keep them from jumping on you and eating your face?!?! Apparently, yes...and the Hunters advised me to make sure the FlyingMonkeys are inside the house before dusk.

Oh and uh they like to sit up in trees and wait for food to come walking by...then they jump on your head and rip your guts out.

Other than the obvious problem with this have y'all considered how hard it is going to be to keep an eye on the ground for snakes and an eye in the sky for BadKitty?!?!

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I may be letting it get to me....this is how I go check out things in my yard now:

Slip out the back door....ease it shut. Look left, right, and left again...no panther...breath. Tippy toe..tippy tippy toe over to my car...back pressed against the house.

Oh crap...did I look under the car, could it be under the car waiting to sink it's giant bloody claws in my ankles like that sicko little dead kid from Pet Cemetery!!!!!!

Keys! Keys! Crap why is my purse so frickin big...

Make it into the car, lock the doors...cause you know panthers are known for their mad car door opening skills.


Drive around the house through the yard to check out this "weird" thing the kids saw in one of the trees.


Whatyaknow...there is a weird thing...a hornet's nest about the size of a large watermelon. When did my yard turn into some freaky episode of Worlds Deadliest Places?

I return to the back door and do a little tactical crawl back into the house. What do you do about a hornet nest? I did what any rational person would do...called my mechanic's son.

My Mechanic'sSon tells me that he has heard that in the winter bees can not fly...that their wings will not work. He thinks I should just climb up in that tree and cut that sucker down...Uh...what????

That is sooooooooo not why I called him....He was supposed to tell me that he would be over here later and would just cut it down for me. There is not even a remote possibility that I am going to shag my fluffy little behind up a ladder to cut down a giant nest of KillerBees...because he heard they couldn't fly in the winter from some bartender at Dwan's.


Cause, hey maybe they can't fly...but if I am stuck up in a ladder by this NestOfDeath and they can still just walk... I am in trouble.


Poor Magnuts can't do anything anymore...One errant golf ball and he is in a swarm of KillerBees...his screaming would attract the hungry face eating BadKitty....ok...so I am borrowing trouble but it could totally happen.

Loving the Bing...

Mrs. Laura Soprano
Laura Soprano
Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Soprano
Tony and Laura Soprano

Oh y'all....I got it bad. We just started season 4 and I am absolutely addicted. We have to watch this in our bedroom with the door shut and the volume down so low that I am learning to read lips. This can be tricky with them throwing around words like: goumada/comare, gabagool, and schfogliadel....

I may be going around the bend....I have manicotti noodles for tomorrow night...and I may even refer to them as "manicot."

I realize that I am delusional...that I am not actually learning Italian...just a derogatory term for every occasion.

I just love this show. Love. It.

Who's The Man...

Thank you all for your kind words concerning Friday's post. I usually try to keep this blog in kind of a "fun zone" and in hind sight feel a little odd about what I wrote. For those expecting the usual goof it must have been kinda like having someone jump out of your closet and dousing you with a bucket of ice water. Miss-D is doing well and so far so good.

On a lighter note...this weekend was the football awards/dance thingy. We had a great DJ who brought a lady to help get the kiddos involved. With ages from K-7th grade it could have been a total bust but it worked out very well...especially for Magnuts.

Yes, that is little 8 year old Magnuts...slow dancing with a pretty 7th grade girl. He, like his father, has never experienced that phase where he thinks girls are gross...we are in big trouble.

Oi.

To Tell The Truth

To those of you who are related to me...I apologize for this post. The subject matter will not be something you want to read.

I believe in the past that I may have mentioned that my maternal Grandmother was murdered. We live in her house, which is also the place that she was killed. About 2 years ago, because of the hard work and persistence of many members of my family and the Alabama Department of Forensic Science, my Grandmother's murder was finally solved.

At the time Miss-D was only 10, none of my children knew that their Great Grandmother had been murdered...only that she had died. I could not imagine being a little kid and finding out that you live in a house where a horrific crime took place.

The day the killer was named there was a lot of publicity. I was warned by the Sheriff that the press would be all over me and that the best thing I could do was cooperate with them and then ask them to respect my privacy. I spoke to every member of the press that asked me to. I answered every question that I was able to. One of the TV stations wanted to come out to the house and get footage. I asked them very nicely not to...reminded them that they already had footage from the time of the murder...and explained that I had young children who I did not want to expose to this.

I picked the FlyingMonkeys up early from school, resigned to the fact that I was going to have to tell them what was going on. As we pulled up to our driveway I saw the news van...and the arsehole reporter filming. I had them leave...immediately.

That night Rob and I sat down with the kids and told them what was going on. I had checked them out of school because I was afraid that some idiot would spill the beans...I wanted to be the one to tell them. I also wanted to tell them as little as possible about it. I only told them that she had been murdered and that the bad guy was dead.

We were able, until yesterday, to shield them from the gruesome details. This is amazing when you consider that the idiot reporter not only filmed my house that day but my mailbox...complete with address...and ran this over and over on TV and had it on the news station's web page.

There were a lot of details that I never wanted the kids to know about...hell I never wanted to know about them. Early in the investigation of her murder some of the parties involved had very loose lips...

Yesterday at school a teacher asked Miss-D about her name. Said that it seemed familiar to her....One of the children in class stood up and blurted out the information about my Grandmother complete with a detail that I was unaware the general public knew.

Last night I noticed that Miss-D had gone to bed early...I knew something had to be going on. I found her in tears. She had Googled my Grandmother's name and found a multitude articles about the murder. She wanted to know why I didn't tell her that my Grandmother had been raped. Why I didn't tell her that the guy twisted a coat hanger around her neck...Why anyone would do that to a sweet little grandmother....

She was angry, sad, sick.....When I tried to explain things to her she couldn't understand why I was so calm. I told her that I had 14 years to adjust to this and that she had only had hours...that I understood why she was so upset.

I had to tell her what my Mom told me when this happened...that the police believed that she was unconscious during the worst parts of her attack....I told her, I swore to her, that this was it...that there was no worse secret that I was keeping from her...

She didn't sleep much at all last night.

15 years ago the news of the world was like white noise for me. I would hear about a murder and feel badly for the family but then got on with my day. After what happened to my Grandmother things are different. I hear about a murder and I wonder if their family will be huddled around the table drinking coffee and trying to figure out what to do like ours did. I wonder who will be answering the incessant phone calls from freaks that want to know the dirty details. How are they going to make burial plans while waiting for the police to release the body. How long will it take them to clean up the greasy finger print dust that seems to cover every surface of the house....

Since her murder I have been keenly aware of the damage that ripples through all of the survivors. Of the million ways if changes all of those lives. Miss-D was born almost 2 years after my Grandmother's death...and last night it smacked into her like a tidal wave...

So now I wonder. There are details that she does not know, details that were not in the articles and should not have been public knowledge, but may be. In the years that I have lived here I have had complete strangers in Wal-Mart ask me about things that made me want to vomit. Things they should not have known. So how long will it be before some dumbarse asks Miss-D about some of them? Maybe I should tell her...but I can't. Speaking those words to her would be like covering her in tar...an emotional beating...I can't do that.

My heart is heavy.

Basketball Jones

So the boys love the game NBA Jams. None of us play or watch basketball so I was surprised that Magnuts really took to it and became the undisputed champion...complete with trash talk. Well, kind of.....

A few days ago I was cooking and kind of listening to him play. I peaked my head in the room just in time to see his tallest player catch fire and make a 5 point shot from the hot spot....causing Magnuts to yell..."OH YEAH CHENILLE! BOO-YAA!"

What? Chenille? Poor Shaq.

This was almost as good as him yelling at his friends to come have a "cuddle up" between plays on the football field...

Not So Slim Shady....

I made this soft little Mary Jane (it is about 3 inches long) out of this beautiful rose colored thread....it is very tiny thread and the hook is also very tiny. Really really tiny. I had an eye appointment right after I crocheted this shoe.

I loath going to the EyeDoctor. Don't get me wrong he is a really nice guy...it is the exam that kills me. It is 2008, can't we come up with something less annoying than:

Doctor: This one or that one...
Me: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Doctor: A or B, which one is better
Me: Uhhhhhhhhhhh
Doctor: *sigh* 1 or 2 which one is better
Me: THEY BOTH LOOK THE SAME!!! I CAN NOT TELL ANY FRICKIN DIFFERENCE....sorry about my breath by the way....

I am farsighted and needed a new prescription just for close up work...like knitting, crochet or reading. Based on the info that I never just knit or crochet...that I am also attempting to watch TV...it was determined that I could choose bifocals or those little glasses that I could slide far enough down my nose that I could look up and see over them. Oi.

I went with the totally sexy slide down glasses...much like the little reading glasses you could get at any drug store...except that one eye is +1.5 and the other is +2.75. Walmart reading glasses would have been cheaper...but they tend to get pissy if you start popping lenses out and swapping them around to suit your needs.

I had to wait until yesterday to pick up my new specs...I tried to hold off on making the other Mary Jane but couldn't. Consequently the new shoe is for some reason a slightly different size than the first. Lucky for me they are a very quick project. So I am going to make a new one today and if for reason I end up with an extra pair I am going to give them away to whoever would like them. So y'all let me know.

Finishing up about the eye doctor...I have brown eyes and they are very sensitive to the meds they use to dilate them. I do not really wear sunglasses and last year out of sheer vanity I left the EyeDoctor without the disposable ones. Spectators had to think that I had just lost my very best friend...I ran to the car, the sun causing tears to stream down my face and swear words from my mouth....head bowed fumbling with my keys. Finally closing my eyes trying to figure out a route to the closest drug store that would not involve my driving right into the sun.

This year I left the office rockin' the disposable shades...don't know if I have grown as a person or if I was just beaten down after selecting my new "bifocals"......

Oh Baby!

Woman Runs Out of Time, Gives Birth In Pants


This woman actually gave birth to one of her twins before she could get her pants off...I do not own a pair of pants that I would not have sacrificed to have this speedy delivery.

There was also no amount of money I would not have offered whomever could have made the experience go faster...

The article does say that the paramedics had to cut her pant leg to remove the baby...just how skinny were her legs...for the love....

So here's to you skinny legged, twin having in your pants super mom...hope baby Kurt and Kurtis don't make you pay for their easy birth for the next 18+ years....

Dropping It Like It's IcyHot

The central portions of Alabama saw some snow this weekend. There were even times when the WeatherGuy suggested that even we might see a flake or two...it was not to be...and I was so disappointed. It was sick really. I was actually a little angry...but with who (told you I was sick)???? There is a city less than an hour north of us that was reporting around 5.5 inches by noon....NOT FAIR.


The part that made me feel the worst was that Magnuts has never seen snow in his life. The older two have but were so young I feel like their memories are actually more like stories just to irritate Magnuts.


At some point Saturday I remembered something my brother and I had done as kids. We were living in the hospital apartments where our Dad was finishing his medical training. Our parents were out of town and our cousin "Chucky" (yeah, he has posted on this site before...) was staying with us. Connected to our apartment complex was this enormous fenced in parking lot. It seems like it may have been at least as wide as a city block...and it was basically one giant asphalt hill.

We took the water hose and pulled it as far as it would reach into the parking lot...pretty far by the way, and turned it on. With careful management and glee in our hearts we managed to ice up the entire bottom half of the lot. We then took plastic hospital trays and sledded until we wore through the ice. When the asphalt started to show we just turned the hose back on. It was so much fun...or it was until armed hospital security showed up...and they did not have glee in their hearts. Apparently covering the parking lot in a 3 inch deep sheet of ice is frowned upon.


So, with that memory in mind I decided to try something like that here. The kids helped me keep up with the temperature all day and into the evening. It did not get down to freezing until after 9pm but was expected to stay at or around freezing for the next 24-36 hours. Around 9 I bundled up, grabbed a flash light and went out to see what I could make happen...for the children...yeah, right. We have a nice little hill right behind the house. My plan was to ice it up and let the kids slide down it. I got the hose and my little sprayer attachment. I set the hose to "mist" and propped it up so that it would be spraying the hill.

I checked it several times before going to bed and everything seemed to be going according to plan. This morning...not so much. The dang thing turned during the night and iced up the flat area before the hill.

**Note to self....a nerf football does not make a reliable prop.



Not exactly and ideal sledding surface...but it is perfect for causing me to bust my arse. I had just taken this pic...turned to go back inside...and WHAMMO right on the ground I went.

So it didn't snow, and we are not going to be sledding...and I may have sprained my wrist and hip in the fall....but...well....nothing.

Epilogue...

A little addendum...a month after we were married I was back at work and not feeling so well. So one day at lunch I, dressed in my BDU's (battle dress uniform), jumped in my camouflaged work truck and headed to the PX to pick up a pregnancy test. I returned to my unit and slipped into the Commander's bathroom to take the test.


When you work with nothing but men...perhaps taking a pregnancy test at work is not the best idea...especially if there is any chance it might come up positive. They did not react well when I emerged from the bathroom in a total daze holding a little white stick with a pink plus sign on it. It appears that a female holding a positive pregnancy test and wandering through the building in a fog freaks them out...big time.

Rob and I were both very happy...but I kept thinking..."How in the hell am I going to tell my Dad about this...He is a Dr. he is going to KNOW how this happened..."


Months later, after I was too large to fit into the Army's Maternity Battle Dress Uniform (yeah, that is funny no?), Miss-D was born...and my parents were smitten. Those two were made to be grandparents. As a matter of fact my Mom loves to tell people that had she known being a grandparent was so much fun she would have done it first.

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I am so relieved that y'all seemed to like the Wedding Story....I thought it might end up being too long and a total snore-fest.

Hope you all have a great weekend!