In which we find some things jumbling around in my brain

 

President Bush flew over New Orleans and parts of Mississippi's hurricane-blasted coastline in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."


 
This just breaks my heart. I can't begin to pretend that I can fathom what the people in and from the gulf coast region are going through right now.

Chocolate vs. Vanilla

They started painting my house this week. While I love my house, I have never cared for the color. It reminds me of the color a melted Hershey chocolate bar turns. You know what color I'm talking about. When we first saw our house it was a deep dark brown, and the paint was peeling something fierce. In order for the VA to approve our loan, the seller had to paint it, and he started with this awful brown before we could put our 2 cents in as to what color we'd like to have. I don't know what I would've picked all those years ago, but this wasn't it. Anyhow, the paint was peeling in many places, and the lead levels were high, so enter the new paint job. We decided to bring it back to it's roots, and go with a nice white. After all, a hundred and seventy years ago, white was all they had. This photo was taken Thursday evening. They spent the day priming the wood, and already there is a huge difference in the appearance of our house.

Five Things I Found in my Desk

So I cleaned out all the nooks and crannies in my desk today. Here's 5 of the most interesting things I found:

1. A spare battery for a laptop I no longer own. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, that laptop is buried in the closet of the boy's batcave (what I fondly refer to his office as). He gave me that spare battery the day I got my laptop. I never used it one time.

2. A neon pink "stress ball" that my MIL gave me for Christmas. Do you think she was trying to hint at something? Both the kids got one, but the boy did not. I have pondered this since that very day.. and come up with nothing. However, that stress ball has been in my desk for almost 9 months. It's reached gestation, and has been relocated to the free table box.

You must be effing kidding me...

What the eff is this world coming to?

"I mean," he went on, "how are you supposed to go from seeing that to wanting to be with ... ?" He stopped, but his eyes kept asking the question.

"Right," I said. "It gets easier with time, for just about everyone."

Although no one seems to talk publicly about the problem, Josh is only one of dozens of men who have confided to me that witnessing the births of their children has made it difficult for them to be attracted to their wives, at least in the short run.

They seem to have trouble seeing them as sexual beings after seeing them make babies, trouble reverting to a mind-set in which their wives' sexual anatomy is just that - not associated with images of new life emerging through the birth canal.

Ummm... woah. There are so many things going through my mind at the moment, that I don't see to be able to find where to start. And here I thought I had nothing to post about today.

Weird Science

As I have previously posted, Miss Thang had a birthday last month. One of my SIL's was missing from the festivities and finally saw her this weekend and delivered her gift. It's a Spa Science kit, that is right up Miss Thang's ally. She is about as girly as you get (check out that photo and pay attention to her right arm, you can click any of my photos in my blog and see them bigger) and loved the idea of the "spa" theme.

Tonight we did Oatmeal Honey face masks. You mix 3 TB of oats (not ground) with two TB of honey and stir well in a bowl. Wash your face and then hold a warm wash cloth over it for about 10 seconds, apply mask and lounge about for 10 mins, rinse well. (and I mean well..honey is a bit of a bear to remove.)

5 Things I've been Procrastinating On:

In no particular order

#1. This isn't so much ME that is procrastinating, it's him. We got the front part finished, and now we just need to do this little back section. It's mostly straight, no funky windows and doors to work around (it's totally wrapped in Tyvek now) and you'd think after the mayhem of the front part, we'd be excited to finish. The problem is we need 2 twelve foot boards to frame the section first. He works 5 mins. down the street from Home Depot. Why is it that 6 days have gone by and we've done ZERO work on the house? Good ole Yankee "oh I'll get around to it"-iveness. That's why. We'll probably start this weekend. School starts soon and I'll have no time to paint.

Speaking of school.

In which we find a few letters

Dear men who are working on Ned Flanders house,

I feel like after all this time I know you like friends. You spend your days over there, working and laughing and I have to tell you, Ned's house is coming along rather nicely. Sometimes I wander out onto my porch to see what kind of progress you've made for the day, and spend a little time watching you work. I am amazed at how fast a house-in-a-box can bet put up. But you are making me so slightly grumpy and I feel like I need to cut this off at the pass. Why oh why must you arrive so effing early in the morning?!?!?! The first day I was ok with it. You came, dropped off your stuff and left. And this happened several more times, with you showing up to do actual work at a more normal time. 7am is not a normal time. I know that I am awake anyhow, and these days even the kids are. And I understand that you are trying to get that house done so Ned and his family can move in before school starts (which is less than 2 weeks away I should warn you)... but for Cripes sake, I haven't even had my coffee by then and the noise of your machines and tools is grating on my last nerve. (see below for why I am down to my last nerve). So what's say you and I make a little deal. You show up at say, oh, 8:00 and I'll bring you cookies and beer.

Love, crazy lady across the way

Ode to Summer...

June how I doth love thee... You are a beacon of hope at the end of a long journey. Even when the temperatures in our old school soar into the hundred degree mark, you nudge us along, gently, with the promise of a well deserved rest. You are the enveloping hug of warmth after 8 months of cold and chilly weather, the reason to get out of bed each grey, dreary day.

July oh sweet July, you are the prize at the end of the race, the trophy for a job well done. An entire month of vacation. 4 weeks of sunshine and sandy bathing suits and sticky fingers. You bring with you the rest that only long blissful days can provide, a renewed energy and a sense of normalcy that has been previously missing. Sweet July, thank you for the warm breezes and long lazy days.

Bust a Move

So my daughter decided she wanted Twister Moves for her birthday. No one else seemed to think that was a good idea, and she didn't receive it. Secretly I was relieved, as I had looked at it the day I bought her guitar and thought, omg, I will have to do this with her.

FFWD to yesterday. Miss Thang got a hefty chunk of cash for her birthday that has been burning a hole in her wallet for 3 weeks. We had declared it a day of rest, and figured why not take her out shopping to spend her money.

My daughter is the most frustrating person on the planet to shop with. She slowly walks each aisle. She sees things she wants and says, "Oh, I want that." So I ask her, do you want me to put it in the cart, and she shakes her head and moves on. Meanwhile my son and DH have moved on to explore the electronics as they have no use for girly items. So we proceed down each aisle, with mom nodding or shaking her head at items of intent. Until we get to the last aisle. And then we turn around and go back.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

This is my porch at the end of June. Notice the grey "barn-board" that runs vertical around the whole thing. There is a section of house that connects to the barn that looks very similar to the right of this. We decided that only the barn should have barn board and embarked upon the biggest house project we've done so far. Our naive little minds figured it'd take a few weekends and we'd move on to something else. We were so wrong.

Friday Five August 12th

Five Things I've learned in 10 years of Marriage:

1. Love changes. When I got married, I thought I could never love my husband more than that day. Boy was I ever wrong. After all these years, it surprised me to realize that not only do I love him more, I love him differently. It's more of a mature, deeper kind of love that I can't find words to explain, but it's nice.

2. Yelling is OK. When I was growing up, my parents fought, a LOT. And I always equated yelling to what I saw in their marriage. So when I got married, I kept a lot of things bottled up, to keep the peace..but we all know that objects under pressure tend to burst. I learned that it's OK to be mad "out loud" . And that getting it out and dealing with it, helps us to get over it and move on much quicker.

Old Dunn Cow

So there I am, minding my own business and doing some work on my laptop in between waiting for coats of primer to dry. Figured it was better than watching paint dry..although considering how hot it's been it's not taking too long. But anyhow, I'm working.. And I'm listening to some fine Irish music that is now on my hard drive, and my son walks by my desk, and stops. He starts listening to the "Old Dunn Cow" and starts laughing his fool arse off. So he goes gets his sister, and makes me play it again. And then they decide they need the words, so we look em up (close as we could find) and print them. And then they had me play it again so they can sing along.

And they are singing at the top of their lungs in the middle of the room, with all the windows and the door open and I'm thinking.. boy I sure hope none of the neighbors are home today.

Is it wrong of me to let them sing an old Irish pub song that contains the lines,"There was Brown he was upside down, he was lappin at the whiskey on the floor "Booze, Booze" the fireman cried as they came a knockin on the door (knock knock) Oh don't let em in till it's all drunk up.. somebody shouted Macintyre!(macintyre!) And we all got blue-blind paralytic pissed when the Old Dunn Cow caught fire"?

Sometimes you just get lucky...

No, not that kind of lucky! Yeesh.

In order to appease the gods, and to show my sincere gratitude for the way that things in the universe sometimes just work out well, I offer this great little gem of a website.

Irish Drinking Songs and Ballards

In which we have some rambles and wonderings and what-not

There are 137 days until Christmas. That hardly seems possible..as we just celebrated Christmas, so I'm just going to pretend that it's not coming. Ignore that I've already stashed some gifts away, and thought of ideas for some others. And forget that next week, when hopefully it will be cooler, I will be up in my storage area cleaning up..which ultimately means having a look at my Christmas decor and taking stock of what I have/need. Nope.. not celebrating this year. Besides, who has time to think about Christmas with school starting so soon and all.

Yesterday I spent the better part of an hour (granted, my electricity was shut off so they could replace the cables running to my meter) watching them assemble Ned Flander's house. If you've never seen a house travel through the air, hoisted up half a time by a crane and dropped on a foundation and then had the roof raised, it's pretty fascinating stuff. And the shirtless bodies doing the work didn't hurt the situation at all either.

And now, a word from our sponsor

Today is Friday. Friday is a good day. Friday means I don't have to cook dinner (although sometimes I do in the summer) and beers at 5:30. Today is the 4th day in a row where I've gotten a good night's sleep, but for some reason I am tired. The kind of tired that smacks you up the side of the head and tells you to slow down.

So my tired self and I have a little chat about no heavy housework, and how sweeping the floors is OK, but cleaning the upstairs is not, and I agreed and decided to spend the 12:30-1:30 hour when it's too damn hot outside to paint loafing off on the computer.

Except my email is down. And while my backwoods cable company has webmail.. the only site I can find for it is the Maine version. Doesn't do me a lick of good. So I do a little clicking, and find that Laurie has a new post (waves, Hi Laurie, glad you're ok...don't pimp the kitties), and Carly was a peach and didn't tag me again (smoochies, don't melt over there in this heat)...

Friday Five-Playground 8/5

Our last (LAST) fundraiser for the new playground.. a BBQ/Softball game between the Fire Dept. and the Police Dept.




5 reasons why I'm happy today, that have to do with the playground

1. Today I found out that due to a final gift donation, we have raised enough money to order our new playground and it will be arriving in appx. 6 weeks.

2. After Fundrasing for 2 (3?) years this seems like almost a near miracle. Words fail to describe the joy of NO MORE FUNDRAISING.

This means WAR

I'm mostly a sane person. You can ask anyone. "Oh that Beth, she's one of those goody-goody's..wouldn't hurt a fly...".

My patience is being pushed right to the bitter edge of insanity. Do you see this photo? There are three bird feeders hanging from that tree. For FEEDING BIRDS. I like birds. I like to do my part to ensure that little birdies don't starve during the winter. And the rest of the year I enjoy seeing which kind of birds come visit my yard.

You'll notice in this photo that there are pigeons. Pigeons are the bane of my very existence. I hate pigeons. Pigeons aren't birds. They aren't even a vital part of the food chain. I mean, what animal do you know about that feeds on pigeons? None. I don't know what God was thinking when he had the Pigeon idea..but the joke's on us.

Room with a View

This is the view from my driveway. I pay my town an extra bit of money for this lovely view. They call it, a "view tax" (c'mon..could I make this stuff up?) If I sit just right on my couch and it's the right time of year, I can see the mountain from my family room. There are currently two trees in my neighbors yard blocking my from having this view from anywhere in that side of my house.

Enter Ned Flanders. You'll remember that Ned Flanders is the neighbor from the Simpson's. Across the way from my house there is the last remnants of the old Muster Field, which was where our whole street is and the town's militia used to march and parade etc. Slowly it was sold off until this one little plot was left. The American Legion of our town owned it.. and sadly last year they felt the desire to sell it to a Congregational church in our town to build a parsonage.