Bring 'em on! Whines big and small welcome.
My son stopped by to work on his car. I had to hide his birthday quilt -- the front's all done and bordered, and it includes baby's first cool shirt, a piece of his grandpa's shirt, a bit of boy scout pants, curtains from our old house, music, animals, pirates, etc. etc.
Old Skool: he complained about the paucity of immediately edible food in the fridge. Dude, we do not need to stock for a platoon since you don't live here anymore! Ah, well -- a quick run to the market solved that worry and the dinner question [burrito night], and the leftovers got cleaned up in the meantime.
What's cookin' at your house?
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Bringing the Cat Bark, waterfall style.
Time?
Why, that would be 5:13 (the glare from the alarm clock saved me from stepping in the pool at the bottom of the water/bark fall.)
The cat, in utter disgust, looked at me with that "Really, is it so hard for you people to keep this place clean?" look, and went to sleep elsewhere while I scrubbed the bedspread and debated whether I had done a good enough job, or if I would be visiting the dry cleaner again - who knows be by name now.
Dry cleaner it is.
Cat Queen is fine. The Barkfall was totally rebound. Eat too much, too fast and voila!
ew, ew, ew, ew. Sue, that is just bad. And, if I may say so, not a good advertisement for cats.
Not that I haven't been doing a million loads of laundry this week. It's Operation Potty Train, Naptime Subdivision.
kathy a., you have helped me immensely. My hubby is always complaining that there is nothing to eat, that I should get "Good Stuff" at the store. I think he means what you call "immediately edible food."
Struggling to get in step with the slower pace of summer around here. Mama's Day Off was fantastic! I hope I don't have to wait a year for another one.
Esperanza, my mom always told me, "people who have time to complain about how others do housework don't have enough to do." and then she would assign whatever task I was complaining about to me (like laundry if I complained I was out of skivvies).
She happily lets others take this idea and run with it.
Sounds like it's time for your husband to take over the grocery shopping.
Liz, clearly you acquired your wisdom from a wise Mama! I love that idea - complainer work force. Yep, that works.
It was warm - as in, room temperature- for about an hour this morning.
That may have been summer.
Now it is cold and raining. Both hubby and I made note of the fact that rain does not need to be shoveled. Ever the optimists!
Sue, my sister (who lives in Vermont) has a joke:
Q: What do Vermonters do in the Summertime?
A: If it falls on a weekend, they have a picnic!
oh, we're off to a roaring start here with cat bark, potty training, the neverending winter, and delegating to complainers. wooo!
my son's problem was that he didn't want to cook anything we had on hand. he really wanted me to get him a take-out burrito, but i AM the meanest mommy in the whole wide world (TM), and he's a grownup capable of doing take-out all by himself.
We had burrito night here too. After glancing through the grocery receipt, going for take-out may have been cheaper. But I have not mastered home burritos and I think that is the root of my 'coulda been better' feeling. Sadly, I am the complainer and the grocery store shopper. Love the idea of delegation, Liz. Smart mom.
I like readily edible foodstuffs as a grocery item.
We had a burst of summer (50 to 90 in about 4 hours). I'd rather it get slowly warm. But yes, Sue, we don't have to shovel rain. Good point.
Sorry for the cat bark - I'm with Esperanza, allergies nonwithstanding, you're not selling the cat ownership. :)
I would agree wholeheartedly, liz, if it weren't for the evidence on the receipts. Me buying a week's worth of groceries for all four of us = Mr. E buying "good stuff" for himself for a weekend.
We will gladly share some summer from here in exchange for the non-shovelable rain. It's been almost 100 for several days in a row, and it's not even June yet. Already in stage 2 water rationing (water lawns once/week, among others).
My brain is tired today.
The barking cat spent most of yesterday attached to me like velcro. I think she might have felt (dare I say it?) a bit guilty re: Bark Falls. Who knows? Maybe she was just cold.
W: I've had a crack in the window of my office for (almost) 10 years. Today may be the day that it blows up. The wind is so strong I can hear it creaking and threatening to shower me with glass.
I've moved everything away from it, shut the blinds and have notified the property people. Kinda creepy.
AW: If it breaks I'll have to work at home. Or nap. Whatever....
Wanted to post what I'm wearing today on mystery mommy. Nordstrom's website doesn't show either the cute little v-neck 3/4 sleeve cardi at all nor the lacy top in the color I'm wearing.
Phooey.
jenr, me too.
sue, you might try taping the thing up -- across the crack, then hurricane-style across the whole window. [like a star -- corner to corner, and NSEW.] we lived in the coastal south for a few years and had a couple of hurricane scares -- this is what everyone did, using wide masking tape.
liz, sounds cute! me, i'm still in jammies. the wonders of the home office prevent me from having a stylin' wardrobe.
ack! we invited son to have a birthday dinner with us and his girlfriend -- his big day is next weekend. and he just called and said, "how 'bout tonight?" which is fine, except the quilt's not done, and his dad wanted to cook. guess we'll go out, and i'll get cracking on the last part of the surprise quilt, and take care of some housekeeping.
i live in hope that one day he will plan and notify people in advance.
Kathy A. Hope springs eternal.
W/AW: a woman who was involved in [redacted] called me today with self-justifications galore. I told her that, in regards to HER, I didn't have any hard feelings, "Because it wasn't like we were close friends", but I did feel pissed off at her since "you're the elected secretary of [other redacted] and it's your responsibility to report out what happens. If you felt you couldn't do that, you should have resigned your position."
Her claim that the folks involved just didn't want the papers and blogs to get a hold of it basically got me saying to her, if you're doing something you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the Post, that's the signal you're doing something wrong.
Which I'm guessing she knew already.
She also knew she's a month late with this phone call.
The whine part of this is I'm ready to not be dealing with any of this anymore.
The anti-whine part is that I'm totally in the right. I know it. They know it. They can't escape it.
ooh, liz -- good cluesticking in a bad situation. it sounds like she's in a hard place, having tried to cover for jerkfaces, but you've got a good point about her public responsibilities in that position. not to mention, points about the jerkfaces.
So, my daughter is turning 7 this Saturday (SEVEN!) , and I have waited too long to get her birthday presents. :( She has a couple of items that she wants desperately, and they are proving harder to obtain than I thought they'd be.
She wants this password journal that nearly every store in my state no longer carries, so I will have to drive an hour to get one on Friday because I waited too long to order it, unless I want to pay 2-day shipping. I can't decide which is worse -- paying for the extra shipping or losing the time it will take to go get the darned thing. I'm not sure if a simple locking diary will suffice, though I picked one up yesterday, just in case.
Additionally, she wants an Americ@n Grl d0ll for the first time ever. When I asked my husband what he thought, he was absolutely against it. She's too old for a doll that costs that much, he says. But as the weeks have passed, her desire for this doll has not waned and a good friend pointed out that my daughter is a lot like her daughter, who is 11 and still plays with hers. So, what to do?
Again, I've waited too long. If I want to get it in time, I will have to pay the AGD website an additional $20. I'm lost. I could probably get the mini-doll from Amazon faster than through the main website, but will it be worth it if she really really really wants the big one? Oy. (And the big one through Amazon is a full $30 more than through the main website, so no go there. I just can't do it.)
Help me, pixies. You're my only hope.
i vote 2 day shipping on smaller items. and -- a small doll might really last longer. people take small mementos to college, but probably not a big doll. just my 2 cents.
I agree with the two day shipping option.
I taped the window very gingerly over the biggest cracks and also over the frame. Of course, now the wind has let up a bit.....
Perhaps the tape will be a nudge for the property committee to replace the window.
........nah........
On Amy's AG dilemma - if she likes dolls, it is worth it. We did the knock-off first and then gave in to the good one. Real AG is pretty amazing. Of course, my oldest, who owns the dolls, is not a huge doll player. AW - younger daughter is a doll lover and will inherit them shortly.
And the Craigslist value holds pretty well is you want to sell it later - which is another route you may consider for buying...
If a trip to Chicago is in your near-future, you might be able to get away with a letter promising her a visit to bring home the doll? The store is crazy and fabulous and overwhelming.
Sue - the wind breaking the glass - way too windy. Wow.
quilt is done. son's on his way over. the cleaning fairy motto is: it looks better than it did before.
Yay kathy a!!! you're amazing!
W: A dear friend called to say that her sister in California died tonight. Same friend returned last week from the funeral of her sister's son. The day after she came home from the nephew's funeral, her dog died. It's so overwhelming. One of those times when I wish so badly that I could "fix" it and make this mountain of pain go away. But I can't. All I can do is be there. Sometimes it just doesn't feel like enough.
AW: She and her partner had a light moment this evening when my friend's partner said "Throw in a broken down truck, and you've have a great country western son." Sometimes if you don't laugh you feel like you might never stop crying. When I heard them both laugh at that, I knew they would be okay. But it's just all so tragic.
Oh Sue, that's horrible. So much compressed into such a short time frame, when one of those would have been more than a person could handle.
W: it's been a day. Fireplacing PMS. All three female members of the family had meltdowns at the *library* of all places. Only one could be blamed on PMS.
W/AW: on the way to the library, the "check engine" light came on. Like any self-respecting woman in the car with two small children in 100 degree heat, I called the hubby. He said just keep going (it's 45 minutes away). So we did. When we arrived, I pulled out the owner's manual, which suggested checking the gas cap. Eureka! It was loose. I *never* leave it loose, but I clearly did last time I filled up. (You can't get to the gas cap without popping the door from inside, so there's no one to blame it on but me. Or--hey--the PMS?). Easy and cheap car fixes are my AW of the day.
I totally get the late gift purchase issue, Amy- happens to me all the time. OTOH, Dancing Girl got an American Girl doll at age 10 and treasured it for years.
She doesn't use it now as she's 22 and a employed college graduate.(!)
AW: Had a (mostly) awesome trip to attend her graduation and celebrate.
W: Pouring rain followed us east.
W/AW: After 4 days I came home, washed clothes and repacked for work trip to large Midwest city.
AW: Good training, nice hotel, not my $.
Major whine: Fell on evening of day 2 of training while sightseeing. (in front of my boss and several peers). Ended up with hairline fracture of radial head in right arm (elbow).
AW: Since hairline, it did not need to be set nor do I need a full cast.
Extra whines: I'm EXTREMELY righthanded. Also, Bert is out of town for the week. (note: cleaning cat box with only one's non-dominant hand is NOT FUN)
Moreover, my office is moving, so I have to move and unpack my crap one handed.
I'm tired, sore and cranky and I can't get the remote to work.
NUD
oh, sue -- so much sadness for your friend. it is good they can find something to laugh about, but also very good that she can talk to you about it all.
esperanza, there is much to love in your last comment. at least the check engine light part has a funny solution, eh?
NUD! graduation congratulations! and oy, about the accident. can you conscript someone to do litter duty? scooping is bad enough w/o having to do it wrong-handed, and in our opinion, certain people owe you.
whining will remain open until friday.
oh, NUD, i totally left out the work move whine from hell! all work moves so qualify in my book, but you MUST conscript persons at work to do the pack/unpack. you have a work-related fracture already!
esperanza - hooray for cheap and easy car fixes!!!! Boo for PMS.
NUD - Congrats on the grad. Extra, Super-Powered, Double Boo for hairline fractures. Especially on your dominant side. Ick. I'm all about delegating appropriate help for the task......you pack the paper clips, everyone else can pack all the files and books.
whiney whine: the other thing i did yesterday was try to unload this rabbit cage that's been sitting in our garage. the person who lent it says to donate it. the humane society, animal control, our vet, and a pet boarding place all declined. i was referred to these rabbit people, who snottily advised me that they do not believe in caging rabbits.
all this time, i thought my SIL's mental illness was the reason she would not use the cage although the rabbits were destroying her apartment - -but no, these are the same rabbit people who provided the rabbits in the first place. who gave them back to her even though they knew she had been diagnosed with alzheimer's and could not properly care for them.
SIL was evicted from her former apartment, and had to pay for the extensive damage. the rabbits are destroying her current home. i'm stuck with this rabbit cage. i would invite the rabbit people to stuff their self-righteousness right up their noses.
oh kathy, how awful!!! Stoopid rabbit people require extra Cluesticks this week. For sure.
Kathy A, as a bona-fide rabbit person I can say that the biggest large national rabbit rescue group (HRS) knows very little about rabbits, gives a lot of bad advice, and I wouldn't touch many of their recommendations with a 10-foot pole. They definitely need to be cluesticked. Argh.
I do have an article on my rabbitry website about why wire floors are not actually animal cruelty if the size of the wire is correct and the rabbit has normal healthy bone structure and fur on its feet, if you think it might help. I haven't written one yet about why rabbits see cages as a den or safe place and it's not cruelty if the cage is adequately sized, especially if the rabbit gets taken out sometimes, but I might do that soon.
You might also look into something called C&C (cube and coroplast) cages or Neat Idea Cube cages . . . if you g@@gle it you should get some hits. That would be a way of being able to contain the rabbits for their own and everyone else's safety when they're not being directly supervised, while also being an HRS-acceptable solution.
Also, try checking the ARBA website for a rabbit breeder or rabbit club in your area and see if they know a non-HRS-affiliated rescue in your area that would like the cage, or they themselves would like to have it. Or contact your local 4-H or FFA extension--they'll probably know a student who would love to have that cage. If all else fails, try Craigslist or Freecycle.
Memorial service for friend's husband on Sunday.
We've visited all our school options, found one we really liked . . . then considered our budget again, and had to face the fact that it's actually beyond our means to pay nearly as much as our mortgage for school. We'd have to be taking money out of our small savings every month to make it work, and I'm sure there are expenses that we haven't planned for that might pop up and make it all go bust. Plus, DH is banking on an expected raise next year to replenish the savings, and I don't like the idea of spending money we don't actually have yet.
I even thought about public school, but we appear to live in a notoriously bad school district.
So we're back to trying to find ways to make the homeschooling more manageable. Visiting an informational session on our local school district's public/home school hybrid tomorrow. (They'd be in class with other kids in the program 2 days a week and homeschooled the other 3. Plus, it's free.)
Amy, check out the Gotz dolls at Tuesday Morning. They're cute dolls, most of the AG clothes fit (except some of the shoes), and they're far cheaper. This is the company that actually made the original AG dolls before they changed manufacturers, and are very good quality.
PK, that public/home school hybrid would at least give you support and a break.
hugs to your friend's family and everyone else about this second loss.
thanks for weighing in on the rabbit cage. i agree with your comments -- if only there was a way to persuade my SIL... i'll check the ARBA website.
The AG mini dolls are not the same in quality or detail, from what I've heard, BTW.
And some people say the Gotz dolls are actually superior in quality to the newer AG dolls . . . they actually have rooted hair instead of wigs, for instance--which means you can wash and dry their hair, or even put them through the washing machine and dryer in a pillowcase (or so I've read--I haven't tried that one).
http://debonairdesignsblogspot.blogspot.com/p/18-gotz-dolls-american-girl-doll.html
My kids have been happy with the Gotz dolls as a substitute so far.
Oh, and it's not the AG shoes that don't fit the Gotz dolls--it's the shoes made for the T@rget and other knockoffs that don't fit because they are narrower.
I forgot to say they run about $20 to $30 at TM. And you can always order a bona-fide AG outfit or two if you want--the clothes are a lot cheaper than the dolls. :)
P_K, thank you for the info on the dolls! I think those suggestions might fit quite well into the solution I eventually came to, which will be a blend of pixie wisdom and Realizing I Can't Do Everything (TM).
I ended up not ordering the fancy diary that's an hour away. The locking diary I got her will keep her busy while she decides if she really wants the fancy one. Maybe a Christmas present. Who knows.
I also ended up not ordering the AG Doll because I knew that what I was ordering was not what she really wants. We also have a plan to go to Chicago this summer, so if I don't end up helping her get her a Gotz doll, then maybe we'll visit the store when we go.
Bonus: she can SPEND HER OWN MONEY ON IT. I forgot that my grandma gives the great grandchildren money on their birthdays. W00t! Now she can enjoy the agonizing choice of What To Get (TM). (It's $25, which would cover a mini AG, a Gotz, or most of the cost of a fancy diary.)
In the end, I doubt she'll notice very much because she is getting other stuff she has been asking for, including one thing that I stumbled on while looking for the fancy diary. SCORE! It will be a total surprise, and that will make me happy.
Graduations and new jobs and birthdays! Oh my!
Happy happy days to all those who are celebrating. And congratulations on successful last-minute present-giving and party throwing to Kathy and Amy. Honorary clapboard for NUD - college graduation is a whole family accomplishment, no?
AW: My stylist was able to give me my usual summer cut despite my thinning hair. She worked some kind of magic because my hair looks good and it feels better than it has in ages. I am almost afraid to wash all that goodness out. Bonus AW: Having also discovered that the salon owner gives fabulous head massages, the wee lad accompanied me. He looks quite tidy, and without the usual kicking and screaming match. The kid loves massages.
W: Blogger still giving me trouble about using the Name/URL comment option.
AW: Chemo and I are taking a break and seeing other people this month. Bring on the summer weather!
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