Was that REALLY necessary?

Yesterday I drove into Wichita to meet with “the folks” for lunch at the Hometown Buffet.  Wow – I hate to be rude but now I know where people go when the state fair ISN’T on…  What a sad and frightening little slice of heaven that place is.    The food was great but if we are truly judged by the company we keep I’m in deep doo doo.   Perhaps I should just grow a beard and eat there everyday…

The news is decidedly boring lately…   Weiner-gate continues to grow (sorry – no pun intended) and I cannot imagine why this man thought his male member was fabulous enough to sext to anyone.  No – I haven’t seen it and I don’t want to.  I have however seen his face and in all fairness perhaps the image that he sent was his “best side”.  I am just grateful that right now we are not in the “school year” and so we are not having to explain or survive this topic in “current affairs”  (yet another unfortunate and unintended pun!)

I have managed to avoid working on the house for days now – only by cleverly working outside cleaning the garden up a bit and planting some green beans.  I love to plant things.  They usually wither and die but I plant really well and in vast quantities and eventually some of my plants do manage to survive.  Last year we had lovely tomato plants.  They never bore fruit but they were really nice plants…

I’m going upstairs to where my studio is supposed to be.  I have to begin sorting all of my hobby stuff and get it organized so that I can fit my wool and baby making stuff up there too.  I am afraid that I will have to begin getting rid of the tons of fabric that I’ve stockpiled in the event of another depression.  The silly part of this poorly thought out plan is that if there is one I won’t be able to find a place to live big enough to hold it all…  And now – 2 cats and a couple of ceiling-high stacks of newspapers short of being on a “hoarders” episode –  I am depressed about where to even begin…  But I will survive this and win and I know that because my son is coming out over the fourth and he HAS to be able to get to his old bed and I want to make him proud.

Life could be a dream…

Well here I am in Minnesota…. It’s been an interesting trip.  On the way up I saw a moving van that had crashed and there were mattresses sticking up in the air… It wasn’t as interesting as the time that the moving van had burned up and a fireman was sitting on one arm of the still-smouldering sofa having a cigarette…  Now THAT was interesting!  I’ve alway been sorry that I didn’t get a picture of that.  But I’m not the photographer in the family.

My car has been shifting funny for a long time – my transmission was dying.  It’s getting fixed this weekend.  I made it up here okay.  Got two bum tires that were making it brake funny too.  I’ll be replacing those while I’m up here.  We laugh all the time when I’m here… well almost all of the time.

Went to the Edina Art Fair today and got my neck sunburned but had a good time.  I wish we could move up here because there is so much to do but I hate winter…

If anyone is reading this you’ll be happy to know that my “cowgirl” showed up at the flea market in Wichita last week.  She’s still kicking!  I finished a baby to keep just before I left to come up here but when I went to the doctors office before I left the nurse bought her.  She was a keeper but I didn’t.  The money was just too tempting.  Now I can get more baby kits!  Poor Mark.  More later – I’m sure…

It’s official – my son is an artist!

Did you see his newest photo?  It’s amazing…  simply stunning… and we all know he’s terribly talented but this new photo just makes it a lock!  WOW James!  Way to go!

Happy Birthday to who, happy birthday to who…

Today was not a great day.  It wasn’t a bad day either but it wasn’t a great day.  I got hugged a lot and told that I didn’t look 51 – which is true… I look about 61.  It’s been a rough year.  What can I say?  I cannot wait until school is over…

What kind of fool am I?

So – yesterday I went and shopped for a good cause.  It was for the Independent Living Center.   I bought stuff that smelled good, a new shower curtain and some cheap jewelry.  Then I stopped and got some KFC in a pink bucket ( Susan G. Komen Foundation) and headed home.  I spent too much money.  I got 3 hours off work (excused) I mean it’s HARD to play hooky when your boss is helping to put Shopportunity together.  You are gonna get caught so I asked and went.  It was nice.  I was completely exhausted after all of that time on my feet.  I waited in line for an hour for my bag which was full of great coupons and offers.  As Martha would say “It’s a good thing”.  Just sorry I couldn’t buy more.  The new accessory shop called Dustee’s has so many purses I am glad I went on a day I wasn’t looking for a purse.  It would have taken all night to pick one out!  And I’ve been to the nursury twice for plants.  I’ve got plants till heck won’t have it.  Now I just gotta plant them…

but, I don’t FEEL funny tonight…

so – I may LOOK funny but I don’t feel funny so I’m not writing anything right now. This week has been crappy in about 15 different directions. If I have any followers I hope they had better weeks. And if I don’t have any followers then I must become more charismatic. I’ll work on that.

Where did my cowgirl go….?

Today we went to the monthly flea market.  I promised myself that I would NOT bitch about the lazy people who motor around on those carts just because they’ve gotten too fat to walk.  Hover-round my A##.  More like run-over-round… oops, too late – bitching…  But you know – if I can walk around on a broken foot for a year – really – can’t they manage for an hour or two?  Do people really not know that if you do nothing and eat anything that after a number of years you WILL achieve maximum density?

So – I had a pretty good morning actually.  I got everything my little heart desired and then some.  I got a baby buggy (for my little fake babies…) I got some more really old pictures of people who we aren’t related to… maybe I will “create” ancestors for my babies…hmmmm….  I got a lovely framed photo of a baby that has highlights painted on it – also no relation….  I got a couple of stereopticon cards for my stereopticon…  I got some turned spindles to make a  folding screen that LOOKS Victorian.   Wow – re-reading this I see that most of my life is faux….  fake babies, fake relatives, fake furniture.

We found some old cabinet doors that are oak and glass.  They are really nice.  Mark is going to build a “wall” out of them for edge of the basement stairs so we don’t fall in the hole.  I think that’s a stellar idea.  I love architectural salvage.  I like old houses and love the idea of putting cool stuff in my house.  Makes it look old.  Oh boy – there we go with the faux thing again…

You know what I missed today?  The lady that is ALWAYS at the flea market who dresses in beautiful western costumes wasn’t there this morning.  Maybe I missed her.  Well… – I DID miss her.  She always looks so “cool” in her outfits.  She doesn’t just kind of look western – she looks like she leapt out of a wild west show or a really good old western.  And she wasn’t there – so where did she go?  And there is nothing FAUX about her.  She’s a real live cowgirl – unless of course she’s dead… 

P.S. Don’t send me messages or make comments about your relative who really didn’t do anything stupid and is honestly crippled.  You don’t know me but I’m terribly sympathetic to those who are truly disabled.  I work with them five days a week.  I’m talking about the folks that tool thru the grocery aisles with the little basket overflowing with ding-dongs and chips who also just happen to weigh oh – four or five HUNDRED pounds… you know you’ve seen them too.    It wouldn’t be so bad that they are lazy but many of them are pushy, mean and rude too.

Hair, teeth and eyeballs…

Hey – it’s Saturday.  It’s getting late though.  Already 4pm and you know what that means.  The next time we look at the clock it will be bedtime and the weekend will be almost gone.  It will be too late for a large meal yet ice cream will not do it.

I’ve got a bathtub full of soaking wool.  It’s not dirty anymore but nothing smells like wet sheep.  My husband doesn’t understand why I miss the sheep so much since I have so much wool in one form or another all over the house.  Perhaps if I keep buying wool he’ll get that I miss having animals out here and we can get some more since – obviously – neither of us is actively dying despite dire predictions made years ago.  The actual reason we have no farm animals is because our free while-you’re-on-vacation animal feeder has left the building.  Darn that kid for growing up anyway.  Then my folks got too old to be expected to deal with horses who should have been named Houdini and chickens that don’t lay regularly.  I do miss waking up to find new lambs in the pasture though.  I also miss the rooster that we had named Cogburn.  He used to rut in the dirt.  Kinky but cheaper than cable.

I’ve got some wool hanging on the porch to dry while the batch in the tub soaks.  In a minute I’ll get off of here and start rooting hair in the doll head sitting next to me.   My kid told me he feels like he’s at Jeffrey Dahmer’s house when he comes to visit.   There are a lot of body parts sitting around.   And the bags full of hair are kind of spooky I guess.  Still – everyone has to have some kind of hobby.    I think it would help if the doll heads had eyes in them but I can’t put them in until after the baby has been baked…

Not just another beautiful day… Wednesday….

At lunch today a co-worker came in and said “hey – there’s a piece of paper on your car…”  So – I thumped out there with my cane and sure enough there WAS a piece of paper on my car.  It’s called a ticket.  This morning the guys on the radio were so stinkin’ funny that I was busy laughing instead of hanging my “I’m a temporary cripple” card.  Somehow the morning guys weren’t THAT funny…   look who’s laughing now…   Did you know that the fine for this is $100.00?  That’s a little high for somebody who has already gotten kicked don’t you think?

It was an otherwise beautiful day.  I drove up to my mailbox and pulled out a card.  It had a post-it on it that said “if you can’t get to Murdock just sign this and I’ll leave the package on the porch tomorrow.”  Did I mention that it was a really nice day?  So nice I decided to drive to Murdock to the Post Office and get my Sari Silk Scraps from some guy named Mohammed in Bangladesh or somewhere… 

The winter wheat is just going great.  Everything is leafing out and the  ride to  “town” was pretty.  I limped into the Post Office for my package.  After a fairly thorough search the guy there told me that the mailman had locked it in the safe in Cheney to deliver the next day.  Now… I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed but I understand basic English.  So I asked him “why would the mailman leave me a note telling me that if I don’t drive down here today and pick this up he’ll leave it on my porch tomorrow if he’s not bringing it here.  To the Post Office.  At the town where my mail comes from…???”  Now I say the word “guy” at the PO because I’m not sure he’s an employee.  There are only about 20 houses in the metropolis of Murdock.    There is no “THERE” there anymore and frankly… I don’t think there ever really was.  We have a new post-mistress that I’ve never actually seen.   When I drive down here  I only see this guy that lives across the street and always seems to be at the post office.  He’s a really nice guy – used to be the one with the paper routes in the area but I’m not sure he’s really an employee… I don’t care as he has way more money than me and can buy his own craft supplies and isn’t likely to take my wool or silk scraps…    Oh damn – off I go again.  Well – long story medium… he tells me that since I just signed the card the mailman will leave it for me tomorrow.  This I know.  But I still don’t understand why the mailman bothered to leave me a note that made it LOOK like I had a choice.

Hello world!

OK – so yesterday was my second day back on my feet.  I walked down to the cafeteria and got my salad.  Unfortunately on my way back a student stood up causing me to pause and shift a bit.  It took about 1/2 an hour to get the salad dressing out of my blouse.  It took about 4 hours to get back my pride.  It took about 10 hours to get all the croutons and cheese out of my bra….