Friday, October 31, 2008
Doing The Monster Mash!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Obama Stole My Route Home!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Would You Like Some Pie?
After Halloween is over, I go into full meal planning mode. I start mapping out my grocery purchases, my meals, cookies, snacks, tasty holiday beverages, and if someone needs a little help with their holiday meals, I am available for catering and cooking supplementation. Oh yes, if you need a perfectly stuffed turkey, baked to perfection, or a savory side dish that you can pass off as your own, I will make one for you at a discount. Heck, it's what I used to do for a living. I can make a beautiful yule log that your guests will ooh and aahh over. Your turkey will look like the centerpiece out of Good Housekeeping. Do you need help? Can I give you a hand for a little extra cash so I can buy a few extra gifts this season? Go ahead.... ask. I'll also share recipes......... maybe.
Till then, I remain the "Martha Stewart On Crack" at holiday time. MSOC for short.
It's Freakin' Cold, Yo!
I am a Floridian, born and bred. I never lived outside of the state until HHH moved us to Tennessee.... and that only took a few years before I was tired of the weather and made him bring us back south. When we were moving back, we had to drive through the mountains. It was February, it was high in the mountains, and it was snowing! I was saying to myself as we slipped and slid..... "Man, am I glad that I will never have to experience these temps again!" Granted it was 30 degrees..... but I was moving back to Florida. No more snow, no more sleet, no more freezing my ass off.
Nope. It's cold. I'm cold. The kids are cold. Junior said he needs more long pants. He was not thrilled at having to wear shorts yesterday. The fun thing about Florida is.... it will be a cold morning, but by the afternoon, you are sweaty and hot. What is that nonsense?
*sigh......... Can it be warm again?
Monday, October 27, 2008
Why I Had Kids.
Now, it seems, Nebraska has a law in place that says anyone can give their children up, as long as they are under the age of 18, at any safe haven designate shelter, like a church, hospital, police station, or fire station. If you are tired of your kids, can't deal with what it takes to be a parent, and really want to be free.....heck just take a drive through America's heartland and dump your kids off in The Husker State! That's what one Georgia mother just did. http://tinyurl.com/5f65dy She drove from Smyrna, Georgia with her 12 year old son and dropped him off at a Lincoln, Nebraska hospital. Just took him for a 1000 mile drive and dumped him. How do you do that? I have no idea. I cannot wrap my mind around it. Even at my most frustrated and frazzled, I haven't wanted to get rid of my children. What do you tell a kid as you're making that drive?
"Well son, it's been a hard 12 years, and you're OK and all, but Dad and I are really wanting to have some alone time, and you're just getting in the way. So, I am going to drop you off over here in Nebraska, and if our plans change, we'll come look you up, OK?"
What does that do to a child's psyche? How does that affect them for the rest of their lives? Can they even recover from hurt like that? How much therapy does it take to make someone not feel like they were thrown out like a piece of garbage? A whole damn lot I say. Those parents......wait, I'm not going to say it. There may be something horrible happening at home that made these people do this, but dammit man..... I was freakin' HOMELESS and I found a way to keep everyone together.
I feel sorry for these kids..... but a part of me is glad Nebraska had this problem with their law. What would have become of these kids if there was no where for them to go?
The world is frightening..... and it isn't even Halloween yet.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Who Is That Masked Man?

Saturday, October 25, 2008
Why I Have Half A Brain, And Other Stuff....


Friday, October 24, 2008
Cause This Is THRILLER!
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
What Was I Thinking?
That maybe I am a good mom? That maybe I set a good example for my kids? That maybe after the 1,943,876,201st time it had been said, that my son would actually listen and be careful?
Nope. Junior wasn't paying attention while riding his bicycle home from school and ran into a woman with a baby stroller. An OCCUPIED stroller! I was horrified! I was embarrassed! I was running to see if the little toddler was alright and apologizing profusely to the woman in both Spanish and English! No harm was done, and the little girl was fine, but now there was the wrath of MOM to deal with. Not two moments before this had happened, I had just admonished Junior to be careful and to look where he is going. He has a bad habit of looking behind himself while riding rather than to look where he is going. Now it has cost him.
What made me the most upset was Junior didn't want to realize that what happened was all his fault. He wasn't being careful. He wasn't looking where he was going. He was ignoring his mother's advice! Junior kept placing the blame on his bike, the other kids, the lady in the way with the stroller, and myself.....anyone but him. "It's not my fault Mom. You let me ride the bike, so you did it!" Now he is grounded from his bike for two months! I keep trying to get it through his head that carelessness will often result in pain and punishment. Pain if he hurts himself or others, and punishment if he is deliberately obtuse! Now I feel like a bad mother. I cannot even control my child for the half mile walk home.
Sigh...... Are we really a society where we just blame everyone else but ourselves when we make mistakes? I guess the current economy and the Bailout should have answered that question, but still...... what are we teaching our children? If you mess up, don't worry. Someone in the government will bail you out. If you have an accident, you can just hire lawyers to get you out of it?? Don't worry about the future, someone will fix our problems eventually before we need it??? That is not the kind of lessons I want to be teaching my kids. I want my kids to be responsible, reliable adults who will contribute to our world in a positive manner. They need to be accountable. We as a society need to be accountable. We need to hold our leaders accountable.
I can't wait for November 4th, and now Junior can't wait for two months to go by.
Live and learn.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Last Two Days.

Monday, October 20, 2008
WTF??!!??

Sunday, October 19, 2008
Maxin' And Relaxin'......
IT WASN'T FREAKIN' HOT AS HELL!
Oh, man it was so nice today. We turned off the a/c and opened up the doors. Do you know just how amazing it feels to be laying in bed, eating Whoppers(the candy), in your jammies with a cool breeze blowing? Ahhhhh..... Fall. I love it. It may not last long, but the little snippets of it we get down here are AWESOME!
On a funny note...... BIL was playing Wii with HHH last night and nephew jumped on BIL and caught him in the nuts. His recently castrated nuts. His recently castrated and not fully healed nuts. HHH said he laughed until he turned purple. I was wacked out on cold medicine and missed the whole thing. Man..... it's just like they say.... it's all fun and games till someone gets their nuts stomped on!
Oh, and I am watching Family Guy as I am writing this, and I have counted at least 9 movie references (3 of them Indy films), and I have figured out that the writers of that show are voting for Obama. (The Hitler/McCain reference kinda pointed that out.) Laughed my ass off. Now time to go watch American Dad in bed and make nookie.
Friday, October 17, 2008
What Ya Gonna Be For Halloween?




We have to start thinking about that. I know what HHH and I are going to be. We are Pirates. It goes back to getting married at TI in Las Vegas and also encompasses our pirate knick knack collection. Anyway, we are pirates, but what I am really concerned with is Rebecca and what she is going to be for her ..... wait for it....
FIRST SCHOOL DANCE!
Yes, her first school dance is going to be the Halloween dance at the cafeteria. It is a fund raiser for the Television Arts program. (I never had TV arts in school.....heck, we barely had VCR's to watch!) There will be a haunted house, food, dancing, and lots of supervision. Heck, they sent home a permission slip just for her to be able to BUY a ticket to the darn thing. I guess they want to make sure the parents want their kids to go and they aren't sneaking out. There were a few caveats to buying the tickets though. The kids are allowed to dress up, but no witches, devils, ghosts, or black cats. Also, the kids aren't allowed to wear masks. I guess this was for safety, but I have a sneaking suspicion it has to do with school rivalry or....maybe gangs. Either way, Rebecca is going with Ms. M's son, (not as a date, but as a friend), and I will be riding to and from the dance with Ms. M. Rebecca has decided that she wants to withdraw $25 from her allowance account and buy the all access ticket that gets her food, unlimited haunted house entry, and VIP entry to the dance. $25! OMG, we maybe paid $5 and got cokes for .50 cents back in my day. So now we have to find something for her to wear. She had a growth spurt so last years costume is out, but she wants to be a vampire one day, a zombie another day, and then something totally different the next day! I can't keep up! I will probably steer her towards the vampire thing since some white makeup, a set of teeth, and some fake blood and we're good. Morgan wants to wear Rebecca's costume from last year, (she was super girl.), and I have no clue what Junior wants to be. I'd get a new costume for me, but almost every kind I see online all look slutty. Yep slutty Goldilocks, slutty Rainbow Bright, slutty Cat....you name it. My pirate outfit covers EVERYTHING! I made sure of that. And it is theatrical quality, so the fabric isn't see through, or too light. Toby will be Spider Dog again.
So now, I have to go and try to shake out the costumes and see if anything needs washing or repairing. I'll go and see what I can find at the Big Lots for Vampire paraphernalia. Right now I am going to go shut off the lights outside for the night.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Hey Mister! Would Ya Like To Buy Some Pecan Caramel Clusters??

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Shut Yer Piehole!



Alright, enough relative smashing. I gotta take the advice of my lovely readers and OD on some cold medicine now, right after "Parking Wars". G'nite all! :-)
Well......Here Ya Go.
As it is, I am just coasting along, until this funk goes away. It's trying to migrate down to my chest, and I am fighting that tooth and nail. Last thing I need is a chest cold. Ick! My main problem is I am not sleeping well at all. The least little noise wakes me up at night. Add to that a cat that is a total nut case at night and you have the makings for no sleep. Maybe that is what the problem is, I can't get a decent night's sleep so it is almost impossible to heal. Jeeze.......
It would be helpful if the cat was a little more normal. Ever since we moved in here, he has had a small problem with the sliding glass door, namely the fact that he thinks the reflection of himself he sees is actually a real cat. Oh yeah....he will sit up like a dog in front of the glass and have slap fights with himself! It is quite entertaining......unless it is 2:30am! Hell, the other day the cat did a face plant into the window! He just started running full speed at the glass and BANG! Luckily he didn't hurt himself. (I still laughed like hell!)
Well, it's finally 6am.......I'm gonna get Rebecca up and ready for school. I accidentally set my alarm an hour early and got up at 5am instead of 6. Reeeeeeally smart, right? Anyway, I gotta run. Good morning to you all!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Ballerina Girl.......
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Yay! We're Decorated!
I love decorating for holidays! I have crap loads of stuff for Halloween and Christmas. Now our Halloween things are up, and I am pleased with the results. We had to go and get new lights for the arch. The old ones were faded and half of them didn't work. While there we also got another little sign, some icicle lights that had light up spiders at the ends and this creepy raggedy gauze fabric. We got the fabric instead of the same old played out fake cobwebs. I was sooooo tired of those..
The photo of the balcony didn't really turn out because of the flash, but all my other shots without the flash were really blurry. It's OK though, because we need another strand of the spider lights and I need to get bulbs for my other pumpkins. I bought a light rig and the damn thing had a blown bulb! Argh!!! I can't be too pissed off.... it is Big Lots.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Ba Ba badubidubi Yum Yum!


Friday, October 10, 2008
Sniffle.....Sniffle.....AH-CHOO!


Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Planetarium's Are Cool, Man.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Just Another Day....
HHH has been a busy guy this week. He's been on call, as you know, and where as the weekend was relatively quiet, the week has been busy. He had 3 calls just last night. I mentioned yesterday that he has been trying to cook dinner for me ever since I started getting sick, yet right before he gets the chance to start cooking, his pager goes off and he has to run out the door to fix someone's problems. Well he made sure that he would get dinner done this time. He ordered pizza!!!!! That's my HHH. Ever the resourceful man.
As for tonight's entertainment, there is just the presidential debates on TV, so we got some movies in the mail. "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" and "Phantom Of The Opera". We'll be watching those tonight. I am so over the debates, the mud slinging, the attack ads, and the SNL skits. I can't wait for November 4th to get here so I can go cast my vote and be done with this process. I like participating in the electoral process, but the hoo haw that inevitably happens along the way just makes it hard. I will happily turn off the debates for a movie and be done with it.
That's it for now. My next blog installment will be about the planetarium. I anticipate many photos and fun. Until then.......
Monday, October 6, 2008
What's New Pussycat?
Sunday, October 5, 2008
I'm Sick.
I am now going to concentrate on getting better so I can go on Junior's field trip Wednesday. We are taking a trip to the local planetarium! Let me tell you, this kid is excited! Every day, he gets out of school and starts rattling off facts about the moon, or the solar system as we are walking to the corner crosswalk. He is so psyched to go there! I remember being excited to take a field trip in grade school, although the very first trip we took was to a local dairy, and all the kids were "eeeeeeewwww" at the smell and there was a dead calf that the rancher thought would be a good way to show the life cycle to a bunch of kindergartners. Oh yeah..... that went over well.
HHH got his hair highlighted. It looks good. I've done it for him before, but he went to my friend Sherri and had her do it. He also got it cut. A little short right now, but when it grows out, it's going to look hot! If he hadn't had it done before, I'd say he was having a "OMG I turned 30!" moment, but he has done it before so it's OK. Right now he is doing the "I feel old." thing. Poor baby. NOT!!!
The cat is sitting next to me right now, biting my arm because I am typing a blog post instead of skritching him under his chin. He does this every once and a while. Like this morning when he decided to bang on the sliding glass door at 7:15am and wake me up. Yeah, I think he did that to get me back for dressing him in the dog's Spiderman costume and taking pictures of it. Vindictive pussy, isn't he? yeah, that's our Fluffy. Don't let the cutesy name fool ya!
Well, this ended up as a bullet post, didn't it. I didn't mean for it to be, but I guess the dayquil is working with the Tylenol PM's and are making my brain run in circles! I do know I want to say a big THANK-YOU to HoosierGirl for giving me the "I Love Your Blog" award. It's my first award for blogging EVAR! I am very grateful and will pass it along just as soon as my illness fogged mind can see straight.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
...But The Princess Is In Another Castle!
Friday, October 3, 2008
Band Geeks UNITE!
I almost gave up again in 7th grade. I had been courted by the Jr High music teacher who was trying to flesh out the music program with a few more kids. He came over and ate dinner with my family and pitched the music program to me, but I was rife with visions of art classes, shop classes, and other fine arts that I wanted to try. I tried them. I was bored. I went to the same music director in my second semester and asked to be added to the program. I was back in business again.
It helped that one of the perks of being in marching band is getting into the football games free. I am a football girl and not having to pay for my entrance to the games was nice. Granted, I had to work for that, half time shows don't just poof out of the air like magic. We practiced 4 days a week after school for 2 hours. It was hot, sweaty work. We also went to district marching contests where our precision was weighed and measured. I graduated high school with my fellow band geek friends. We had a kind of family.
I went off to college at UF in Gainesville. I joined the Pride of the Sunshine and FDL. If I thought high school was a ball, hoo boy, college was even better. I actually got college credit to be in marching band having the time of my life! We went to games in New Orleans, Jax Beach, and Atlanta. I went to Nashville, Knoxville, and Birmingham. I learned what a stadium filled with 85,000 people sounds like as they scream for you, (and it was me because I was driving Big Boom and the cheering started when our crew emerged out of the tunnel.). I got to see new places, meet new people, and expand my band family. I got asked for my autograph. I have been on TV multiple times. I was patted on the back just because I had on the orange and blue. It's a great feeling, to be a part of something that has far reaching hands all over the world to people you don't even know.
Now I am asking you for something. There is a Battle of the Bands contest on ESPN.com. http://tinyurl.com/3pqvaq There are 7 university marching bands competing for a $25,000 dollar donation to their respective school. Even more exciting, 5 of the 7 finalists are SEC schools!!! It is a promotion in partnership with Lucasfilms and the new Indiana Jones flick that is coming to DVD. Go and vote for what ever band you choose. They all have videos of them playing the "Raiders Theme" that has been arranged by their directors, so you can see and hear what these organizations sound like. (I have UF's over in my side bar. Give it a go.) I am partial to my Alma Mater, UF, but vote for whom ever you want. What is important here is that $25,000 can be used for scholarships, new instruments, equipment funds, and uniforms. With gas being like it is, it would go a long way towards bringing 8 to 9 charter buses of band members to an away game to support their team and cheer them on to victory!
We as a society have written off the fine arts as expendable. We have so much trouble just getting Johnny to behave in class so he can be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic that art, and music have been thrown to the winds. Go and vote for a band....any band, because we shouldn't have to live with out the cracking of a drumline, or the roar of a full brass front.
Yep. I'm a band geek.
PS- If you get a chance, watch all of them. LSU's is awesome!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Fall

