I almost forgot that I was going to announce the winner of the “What’s wrong with this shirt?” contest on the Friday of Ike.  I was …busy.  Sorry.

There were 6 contestants with the right answer:

Madam Queen-Leandra

A Screed In Time-Roger

Silly Me-Sebrina

Susan Crosby

Karilyn Hernandez

Speak Into the Mike-Mike

Here is a pic of Keelan selecting the winning name from the bowl! 

And the winner is……. Susan Crosby!  I will be getting an email to Susan ASAP and shipping her lovely prize of foot care products in the very near future.  NO.  REALLY.  There won’t be a hurricane this time. (knocking on wood, frantically…)

Thank you all for playing.  You’re all winners in my book.  Better luck next time…yada, yada, yada…

OK!  See, I finally got the long promised pictures up!  Woo-hoo!

This is Rich’s house, across the street, before the hurricane.  Take a moment and note the very last tree on the right…kind of in the background.  It is very vertical, huh?  You might even say exactly perpendicular to the ground…

Here is the corner of Rich’s house with a now somewhat diagonal pine tree looking to head toward Gene and Elsie’s house.  This is on Saturday, the next day after Ike.  It is being appraised by The Hunky Tree Guys.  Some of you out there, (ladies), may want to click and enlarge this particular shot.

As you can imagine, tree guys, hunky or no, were in great demand and raking in the cash hand over fist in the following days.  Here’s the kind of fantastic neighbor’s I have:  Gene and Elsie are gone, evacuated.  Rich paid The Hunky Tree Guys $1100.00 to do nothing but cut down the tree and just leave all these great big sections in his yard.

The Hunky Tree Guys are price gouging, big time.

Normally, the fee for this kind of job would be about $250.00 and that would include stump grinding and debris removal.  This is how busy they were.  All of this was done without Gene and Elsie’s knowledge so that the tree wouldn’t go crashing into their house the next time it rained, (later that night).  Of course they cut Rich a check for half the cost as soon as they got home and he told them what had happened.

Here is the front of our house before the storm and afterward it looked pretty much the same except for missing screens and one of the window shutters along with a buttload of branches and tree debris in the yard that we spent a long time cleaning up.

Back of our house all boarded up and cleaned off except for all the larger plants I shoved over in the corner.

Looking down the road going to my friends house…  needless to say, we didn’t go, not that day anyway.

From the car driving down the road close to our house.  Those are NOT bushes, it is manicured lawns full of tree limbs.  (Pardon the windshield wiper.)

A bit blurry, but you can see the huge root ball of the tree that just pulled up in the wind.  It’s laying over on the house.

The fuel center at John’s store.  Those are soda and newspaper machines that were tossed around like nothing.

Storm grate where I found the baby egret with it’s butt kind of down in one of those holes… I thought it was stuck there.

The baby egret, after I picked it up and carried it over to some bushes.  It was pretty small, that’s my hand there to the right of it.  I guess I could never be a professional photographer, (even if I was the least bit skilled at snapping pictures), because my first reaction upon seeing this bird was, “Stop the car!  That bird is stuck!”, and I jumped out and got it and moved it before it occurred to me to take a picture.  I could never just remove myself from the situation and photograph things.

Here is my love-bug sitting out back resting after we got through hurricane proofing the house.  We were just hanging out waiting for it to start up and noticing how weird and silent it was.

Here is the continuation of the whole Ike debacle.

Oh, I never did get the photos from John and he still has them on his jump drive.  In his pocket.  I am just not working out!  I will really try hard to remember to get them tonight, I promise!

Tuesday, September 16- Today I saw two hummingbirds and a housefly. Please God, don’t let anyone tell the mosquitoes how to get back…

There is candle wax ALL OVER MY HOUSE.

SO. FREAKING. BORED.

I can’t believe how awfully bad my carpet needs vacuuming.

I have decided I am not going to boil another pot of water for dishwashing. I have been inconvenienced enough already and if some sort of plague gets its start here, in my house… well, I’m sorry.

We are probably all going to die of dysentery. My next door neighbor said she never did boil the water for washing the dishes. I don’t feel I know her well enough to ask about her bowels…

Keelan went to meet the vet out at the barn as our horse and pony show now necessitates a visit. Dandy, (her mare), has a bad cut on the back of one of her ankles from… barbed wire(?). She got there and discovered, yet, another snake in her tack room. A couple of her friends were there with her, DJ and Victor and they, being boys, quickly and joyfully beat said snake to death with shovels. Eww.

Wednesday Morning, September 17- We got last Friday’s newspaper delivered to us. The first bit of outside news since last Thursday. The editor had a notation on the front page saying they are going to try to get the past issues caught up in the near future.

Our good friend, Roger, brought us over a generator and I hooked up the washer and dryer to it after I ran the fridge for about 6 hours. I then proceeded to do rapid fire laundry. Frantically.

As I was slowly rolling the refrigerator forward to reach behind it and unplug it from the useless hole in the wall, my grandmother’s 70 year old Kitchen Aid mixer fell off of the top of the fridge and landed squarely on top of my head. Dead center. I cried. That sucker must weigh 15 pounds and has a motor that could run a riding lawnmower. Keelan was frantic and I ended up feeling sorrier for her than me. It really did scare her to death.

Crap. I am watching a mosquito, (among the first of many to return), searching on the outside of the window. It’s the one window that is just cracked open a tiny bit because that particular screen was never found after the wind died down. Plus, the little dog keeps making her escape through that window every time she see’s someone walking their dog, so it isn’t open very much. I’m going to have to shut it because the mosquito is being persistent and will get in eventually.

OK, I’m back.

When I was done with the laundry I unplugged the washer and dryer and left the fridge hooked up while I plugged the TV and DVD player into the generator, also. (The cable was out well before they cut the power…probably as soon as the sun was behind a little white cloud. By way of explanation I say to you this one word…Comcast.) So we watched movies and sat and wondered what was happening on the news. What the surrounding areas looked like, death toll, what the evacuation looked like, etc.

The cicada’s are back… it’s gonna be a scorcher.

Thursday, September 18- No paper today.

Friday, September 19- THE ELECTRICITY CAME BACK ON!

Today is Monday, September 22, and they STILL don’t have everything completely full at the stores. At least they have opened the major highways back up leading into Houston. John’s store is getting as many trucks as they can spare to send him. He has worked 14 hour days EVERY day since the hurricane, and he is running out of steam.

My friends, a few neighborhoods away from us still don’t have electricity. Lisa is out of town, evacuated, and Roger is practically living at work. He is bringing over his clothes, which I wash and I’m cooking for him. Poor guy, I hope and pray they get their power back on soon.

Needless to say the Comcast services still aren’t working and I am betting another week at least. We will see. It would be fun to take bets.

We were really stupid when we signed up with them because we got a bundled service thing where our cable TV, internet, and digital phone, (whatever that is) are provided by them. Or not, whatever. So we have been without a landline this entire time and my cell bill is going to be exorbitant. My smart neighbors across the street never lost their phone service because THEY DON’T USE COMCAST.

Have I mentioned my loathing for Comcast?

Thursday, September 25- My friend, Lisa, was on her way home yesterday from evacuating to San Antonio and John was off work during the early part of the day. As we drove by her house on the way home I saw that her porch light was on! I called her immediately and told her that her electricity was back! What timing! Lucky dog never went without it the entire time.

OK, I am so glad to be back and will go immediately to read everyone as soon as I throw this miserable excuse for a post up!  You might want to wear a neck brace while reading… it jumps around a bit.

First of all I would like to thank my brother, Cam for updating everyone during my absence.  I really hope he only chokes a little on the vino he’s going to be drinking in beautiful Italy this weekend.  heh heh heh

Love ya Cam!

Today is September 27 and we just got internet up and working as of yesterday.  Two weeks after the stupid storm!  I started transcribing a post from a pile of scraps of paper onto Word Friday of last week, (when we got electricity back), and am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to successfully copy and paste it to the Wordpress thingy which acts strangely at best due to the fact that I am cursed with Vista.

Here goes nothing!

Hello there, interwebs! I am back, finally, and I missed you all! I am starting this on Friday, September 19, 2008 and am a bit flummoxed at the thought of trying to get caught up. Luckily, I jotted down notes here and there during the last few days. Following this paragraph is a fairly random collection of them starting Friday afternoon, Sept. 12, the day hurricane Ike laid us out. We just got electricity back at about 12:30 in the afternoon, yesterday. Six days after it went out. And while I know we have so very much to be grateful for and are truly blessed to have survived virtually unscathed, I can’t help but point out that living in this humidity and heat, without floor to ceiling windows on all the exterior walls, is a gruesome ordeal that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Well, OK, maybe that would be the perfect kinda conditions for my worst enemy, but my point remains that I can’t imagine hating anyone with that much intensity…you get my drift?

6:00pm Friday evening- the power company cuts the electricity. Winds are starting to pick up just a bit and we all know the big ones are coming. The preemptive electric outage is to keep people from injury, (and certain death), when the lines fall.

The following night is harrowing. H is given an Adivan and sleeps through the entire thing. (Thank you God, for Adivan.)

Apparently I will take anyone or anything in to shelter through a hurricane including, but not limited to, stray dogs and a 6 ½ foot red tailed boa.

The poor dog was left here when his crumby owners evacuated. They left the gate open and left. Just like that. The other neighbors and I were talking about it and the fact that one sweet lady down the street had taken him in. This was Friday afternoon and Ike was due to show up that night. She was saying that her chocolate Labrador was trying to tear down the door to the room where she had the dog, so I offered to take him off her hands until after the whole dealy-o blew over. He really was sweet and well behaved, just scared to death of everybody AS IF HE HAD BEEN ABUSED. The deal was that the house next to us on the corner with the trio of sweet little girls was going to take him in when it was over. Of course the next day my daughter’s boyfriend left the gate open and the dog went in the backyard via the doggy door and promptly left. So, in the rain, John and I drove around the neighborhood until we found him and I got out IN THE RAIN AND CHASED AND BEGGED AND PLEADED AND CONJOLED, and yes, cursed, that dog into letting me catch him and haul him into the car, (where anybody would want a wet dog).

I then took him to the little girls and dumped him on them. They were delighted and I still haven’t gotten any evil looks from their mother so, here’s hoping…

Keelan has a friend of some standing…with her at least. Anyway, this kid has a large family with three cars between them and other pets involved and he claimed that there wasn’t room for the tank that accommodates the huge ass snake and, of course, not the snake either. Am I easy or what? NO. Don’t answer that!

Saturday AM- It is rapidly becoming evident that I will be requiring a shower every 15 to 20 minutes. The temperature is hovering in the low 90’s with 110% humidity. From our front yard the neighborhood looks like….Bosnia. A total war zone. I turned to John and said, “Honey, I don’t think you’ll make it into work today…”

Big Mess! Hot, so very hot. The power lines are all underground in our neighborhood, but the one next to us has huge trees snapped off halfway up and just flipped up with gigantic root balls sticking up in the air. They are all laid over on the power lines. We can’t get into it for all the debris so we just drive by looking in from the road betweenus.

All we could hear was the constant chainsaw and generator noise backed by the incessant drone of emergency vehicle sirens and low flying news choppers with the occasional med-a-vac , Army and Coast Guard helicopter thrown in for good measure. All the windows are open and there is hardly a breath of air moving through this house. It is stifling.

Last night we had hurricane and, of course all the windows were closed tight and most were boarded up.I set the thermostat extremely low in the house during the day so it would be a cool as possible when we lost the lights. The cool air lasted partially through the night.

Well, when Henrietta said she was ready to go to bed I rolled her in there and got her ready and she said, “Oh, close the window, Krissa.” I said, no, we really would have to leave them open because it was too hot in the house with it closed. “Oh Noooo! I’m fine! Really! I’ll be all right. Just close the window. “ No, Henrietta. You’re room is directly across from ours and in order for us to have any kind of ventilation at all we need your window open. Then, (very pointedly ignoring what I have explained and attempting to act as if it is beyond her comprehension), “Oh no, Krissa. I CANNOT HAVE THE WINDOW OPEN. No, no… I never have and I don’t want it open.” By this time John showed up and backed me with the whole argument. She see’s that she’s not going to get her way….at least not easily, so she turns on the tears. We both stand firm and she shuts them off. I swear it’s like flipping a damn switch. I left the tacky venetian blinds she insists on having drawn at all times down and closed and had to sneak back in and open them when she was asleep.

I am told by my mother on my cell phone that we are supposed to be boiling our drinking water for 1 minute. So I am boiling huge pots of water on the stove to pour in the sink and wash dishes in. Thank God, we have a gas stove.

The entire house gets significantly hotter when you are boiling huge pots of water on the stove with no A/C.

You really can make coffee by pouring boiling water into a carafe with coffee and letting it sit for a bit and then pouring this disgusting looking sludge through a filter into a cup. I found that using a paper towel worked even better than a filter because it would conform to the shape of the cup better.

I would kill for an old fashioned board game of some kind. As of two garage sales ago, we got rid of all of ours.

By the time there was enough trees moved for us to make it off of our block, (a day later) we decided to try to make it to our friends house a few neighborhoods over. They had evacuated and had asked us if we could check on their house the first chance we got.

Our neighborhood has all the electrical and phone lines underground, but the one next to ours has even more mature trees and it’s all above ground. At least every other house had a huge tree either broken in two and lying on the lines and/or house or the trees were just lying over with a gigantic root ball pulled up and sticking in the air. It was crazy. We weren’t able to make it by our friend’s house that day or the next as there was no way to get there. The streets were impassable immediately around it. John finally got by a few days later on his way to work. Thankfully, they had no flooding and no trees on their house.

ALMOST OUT OF COFFEE.

You CAN read trashy novels by candlelight. NO, it doesn’t make sweating your body weight romantic.

My neighbors really are wonderful people and we all pull together really well when there is an emergency.

One really bizarre, other worldly experience was realizing that even three days after it was all over, there were still no birds/bird sounds or flying bugs. Saturday afternoon I went with John up to the grocery store he manages to see how bad it was or wasn’t and as we were driving through the parking lot I saw a baby egret sitting on one of those big metal grid storm drains. It just sat there as we passed by it and had one leg down in the hole and the other one clutching the grate. I thought it was stuck and had John stop and I got out and went over to it, picked it up and the poor thing just looked at me. It was clearly in shock. I believe it was thinking something to the tune of, “What the hell. Of course the human lady will pick me up. After the night I’ve had, what else could I expect? This is nothing”. I carried it over and put it in some bushes and it immediately scrambled under them better.

What is it with me and strange baby birds? Owls, Egrets, what next?

Sunday – John goes back to work and it’s a hell hole. Everything was wiped out, pretty much before he left on Thursday. The benevolent souls at the top of the corporate ladder, (or whoever), decided to actually close the store on the Friday of the storm. I must say that this surprised me somewhat as the storm was due to show up fairly late that evening. Believe me when I say that if Walmart or Target had stayed open, they would have, also. The thought was that they wouldn’t let the managers go in time for them to evacuate their families, so they would give them a few hours head start on getting their houses boarded up before the wind got there. And that, my friends, is as much as can ever be expected of these people. John had worked 12 hour day’s everyday that week in preparation for the storm, as had the other managers at all the stores on the gulf coast in the chain. When they got back to work on Sunday, they spent the greatest part of the day throwing out every last parcel of meat, frozen and refrigerated food. I came to find out the generator only runs a few lights and the registers if the power goes out and that’s all it did. They reopened with virtually empty shelves and zero meat, dairy and frozen foods.

People were understanding and patient, helpful to each other about information and standing in line.

Over the next few days things really went downhill fast. Trucks arrived as often as they could possibly get there and it became harder and harder to explain why WHEN EVERYONE RUNS OUT OF THEIR REFRIGERATED ITEMS AT THE SAME TIME IT IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SUPPLY THE DEMAND. Not to mention the bread everyone was going through, along with chips and snack items, etc.

Sunday night- Henrietta apparently has given some thought to the window situation and feels she did not put on her best performance last night. Tonight, she pulls out all the stops. She announces that she can’t sleep like that and she woke up afraid over and over last night. Bullshit. Not a chance. She NEVER wakes up when she’s taken an Adivan and she would have rung her bell if she was the least bit afraid. She argues with us both about it and continues to insist the window has to be down. She apparently has absolutely no regard for how anyone else might feel or how much sleep her own son may or may not get before he trudges off to work like a dog for 12 to 14 hours. Finally she tells us that we are abusing her by leaving her window open and I have had it. I got in her face and John looked l at her like he was going to explode. I unloaded a bit and she started to dry up some. There really is no end to her selfishness when it comes to her own little wants and paranoia’s. Needless to say her window stayed open. She told me to “Pleeeeease keep me blinds down, Krissa!” I certainly will. Until you are asleep…

Monday- There is not a word from her about the window or the blinds or anything else at bedtime. Halleluiah!

And the rest of the time until the lights are back on, (Friday), she doesn’t say another word about it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I will post the rest of the… story tomorrow and add the missing pictures.  Come to find out they are riding around in John’s pocket on his jump drive and he is at work, (where else).  I’ll get them when he gets home.  Things are still very disorganized around here and I’m having a hard time getting back in the normal groove.  Sorry.

Just me, Cam again (Krissa’s brother for any newcomers out there) and just a quick post to say that Krissa’s electricity is back up and running but still no phone, cable or internet. At least they’ve got air conditioning again!

Cam again here. While waiting for Krissa’s electricity to be restored, let’s enjoy a video about the Internets!

All:

This is Cam, Krissa’s brother, here with an update.

Krissa and family are fine. No flooding in their immediate area and it sounds like all they lost was a window screen and shutter. Lots of trees down in their area but none on their property. They survived the night with one extra dog and boa constrictor (pet sitting for some evacuees).

It’s interesting that they had so little damage because I was tracking the storm this morning on line and it looked to me like Ike’s eye went right over them.

They lost phone and power early in the storm and may not have it back for quite some time (weeks?).

I’m sure Krissa will give you guys the full play by play once they are back on the grid.

Anyway, if they get their phone back before their power, I’m guessing Krissa will call me and I’ll transcribe an entry or two for her.

Weather in Tuscany, Italy: Some much needed showers this morning, followed by a beautiful cool afternoon. HAHAHAHA! We’re going grape harvesting tomorrow and gonna have some good vino as our payment for what all we pick. I’d pick that over cleaning up after a hurricane ANY day.

Bye!

Well, here I sit in the path of destruction.  Future path, that is.  We will see.  We are north of the predicted landfall and thus, on the “dirty side”.  For all of you hurricane virgins, this just means the side of the hurricane with the most rain.

We evacuated three years ago for Rita and I will never forget that experience as long as I live.  Someone, somewhere, high up in city politics probably, screwed the pooch and started yelling something to the affect of “Run!  Run for your liiiiiives!”.   It was just plain hysteria talking due to the totally unbelievable fiasco that happened in New Orleans.  Apparently the ones in the know didn’t stop to consider that there was no way to duplicate that tragedy anywhere else but New Orleans.  The city that sits below sea level and has a series of dikes and levies, (that were in poor repair), holding back the water.  This information was apparently denied the person who started telling everyone to evacuate, from Galveston all the way up north of Houston to Conroe.

My FIL was alive then and so we had John, Henrietta, Marcos, Keelan, me, two dogs, two cats and oh, did I forget to say that the day before the hysteria we picked up my dear friend Susan from the airport.  She was visiting me from Italy, via her parents house in Denver.  Almost my first words were, “So, have you watched the news lately?”  At that point we were just barely paying attention to “it” and were wondering if it was even coming this way.  By the time we got home and turned on the TV things were getting all out of control by the news media.  They were starting to get whipped into a frenzy and eventually, I am sure, they believed their own hype.  EVERYONE was leaving.  We got sucked in and piled on the freeway outa here with everyone else.

It normally takes about 7 hours to get to my parents house up just north of Ft. Worth.  We arrived in 32.  No, REALLY.

Quite literally, Marcos almost died on that trip.  He and Henrietta were both on Hospice and doing fairly well at the time.  We sat in stopped traffic in triple digit heat for hours and hours.  There was no A/C because you can’t run it in that kind of traffic as the car will overheat.  He dehydrated to the point that when we FINALLY found a place we could stop, waaaaay off the beaten to death path, he staggered out of the car with a good deal of help from me and walked straight over to a trash can and threw up.  Henrietta’s wheelchair was strapped on top of the Trailblazer and so John just picked up her 80ish pounds and carried her in to the restroom for me.  He turned his head while holding her up in front of the potty while I snatched down her pants and she pooed in the potty.  I was able to hold her up while I pulled up her pants…somehow.  I don’t really remember how.

You should have seen all the looks we got with him carrying her in there!  That was so funny.  That was the only funny thing about the entire experience.  John and Susan took turns driving and I kept apologizing to her for the lack of fun her visit was being.

Susan was a dream come true to evacuate with.  I wouldn’t wish what happened to us on anyone, let alone my best friend, but good Lord, she was such a help.  Just dealing with the old folks, was hard enough.

Poor Marcos.  We planned to leave in the dead of the night, I’m thinking it was about 1:00AM, so hopefully we wouldn’t have as much heat to deal with.  At least not immediately.  I told John and Henrietta that I was going to give her an Ativan, (anti-anxiety meds), so she could just go ahead and sleep once she got in the car.  She agreed that she should.  They were her Rx and she took one every night to help her go to sleep.  So when we left I gave it to her and turned to Marcos and said, “Here, Marcos, why don’t you take one, too?  It’ll help you sleep.”  Famous last words.  He popped it in his mouth and we set out.  In about 20 minutes he started crawling out of his skin and was grabbing everything in the front seat with him.  NOTHING was sacred.  Gear knob, glovebox, buttons on the door, OnStar, radio, A/C, played with the seatbelt endlessly.  He was like a very badly behaved toddler.  I can’t tell you how many times I said, OH GAWD, I AM SOOOO SORRY I DID THAT!  Needless to say, he never got another Ativan.

So I have been up since the butt-crack of dawn trying to get “ready”.  We are staying here and keeping our fingers crossed.  I know it is looking really bad right now, but last time, we left and the power never even went out, people.  Not a single blinking clock greeted us upon our return.  I think there was a medium sized dead branch in our yard.  Woo-hoo.

Is this the smartest thing I’ve ever done?  Probably not.  Yet, neither was evacuating for Rita.

Hi intertubes people!  How’s it hangin?  We’re fine here and intend to be right up until we are washed away by Ike.  No, not really.  I don’t think he’s going to stray this far north, we’re just going to get a good deal of rain.  Oh well, we were behind in that department anyway.  I just hate getting caught up all at once…*sigh*

A few strange things happened today.  Firstly, my 17 year old girl child has gone to a City Council meeting with a friend of hers that is in a  US Government class.  Her friend says she needs, “moral support”.  Yeeeah.  Sure.  Keelan says she is going to have US Government next semester so why not?

John and I are taking bets on how long they are allowed to stay before being thrown out.  Their odds are not good.  Contact your bookie.

I have been sitting here watching The Weather Channel and I cannot, for the life of me, come up with a good solid reason for wanting to live in Cuba, year round, except for that pesky Castro not letting anyone leave…  I mean these people get totally flayed by multiple hurricanes every single year.  They wind up to cat 4 and 5 and go tearing across the island, sometimes twice per storm.  These people, for the most part, live in a near poverty situation and are flattened over and over.  Hundreds and hundreds die every year.  And they couldn’t leave if they wanted to.  Not even just for Hurricane season.  And that just seems wrong.  They should all be allowed to leave during the season for, oh, Europe or something…  God knows I wish I could.

Someone should complain.

H has a new caregiver provider person.  YES!  Again!  I know, I know.  I have reported this several times already, and no, I wasn’t lying.  The latest is “Tiffany”.  So far so good.  Please, everybody cross your fingers. She stayed here with H today while we ran frantically around for our allotted three hours.  Got back and she had done all the things I had verbally laid out for her to do.  And for those of you wondering, no, she won’t do taxes or windows.  Henrietta got a “bed bath” and put in the chair and her sheets changed.  Plus she cooked her breakfast and washed and figured out where to put all the dishes up.  All this was amidst her being visited by the nurse and then a very nice little lady from the church that comes by to give her communion.  I didn’t ask her to clean H’s bathroom or clean her room or anything cause we were having such a hard time getting out of here and she’s new, so I would have had to take more time than I already had when I showed her what to cook for her breakfast and how and where it all was.

I swear.  If she starts not showing up, I will scream.  She is very nice and H really likes her and each time she has left, Henrietta says, “Oh thank you so much for everything you did and please come back!”  How sad is that?  I will talk to her about trying to muster up a tear next time…

So far the contest has been hotly debated.  I have given up clues in the comments section, but, I swear, it’s something that is unusual to any mans dress shirt and is the reason John refuses to wear it.  It is an obvious thing at first glance and we should have noticed it except that it’s not that obvious.  Obviously.  I can feel all the obvious evil thoughts you people are sending me, now…  Oh!  There has been one winner so far!  And she’s not even a regular commenter.  I erased her comment immediately as soon as I got it and wondered, just as quickly, why I had set it up this way.  I should have said the first person to get the correct answer.  But I didn’t so if you can figure out what is such an obvious problem with the shirt that John won’t wear it you get a shot at the lovely prize also.

More tomorrow.

What’s wrong with the men’s dress shirt in this picture?

John and I bought this dress shirt for him recently and while I love the color and the soft, cotton damask fabric, we both neglected to notice one very important problem.  No, it’s not the size.  It looks great on him and fits perfectly.  I didn’t button it all the way, but it’s not the buttons or the placket.  The shirt will never do.   He will never wear it to work.  He says he’ll wear it on days where he has all day meetings.  I know better.  I am betting he will never put in on except to maybe go out to eat, occasionally when it’s very cold.

Click on it to make it bigger if you want to.

Can you figure out what’s so wrong with this men’s dress shirt that would make him not want to wear it, yet it never occurred to us to look for the, (quite obvious), particular problem it has?

Here’s the booty prize, er, no! not “booty”, just prize!  Eh… yeah! That’s what I meant…

This is Burt’s Bee’s Foot Care Kit.

Foot Care Kit

Completely pamper your feet.

How it Works

Treat your feet to a pedicure in the comfort of your own home. All the natural foot care tools you need are right here. A pumice stone will help smooth rough skin. Then moisturize with Coconut Foot Creme and our comfy Bee socks.

I will mail this to you promptly, after you’ve been chosen as the winner of this contest that ends on, oh…let’s say Friday September 12.  Multiple right answers will be numbered and tossed, then served to one of my rather undiscerning teenage daughters to select a winner.  Believe me when I say that the number selector’s general lack of concern for which right answer wins could not be more left to fate if I was to use a random number generator.  There will even be a guaranteed gratuitous eye roll accompanying the selection.

The more I look at the pictures of the little owl fellow that flew around in our garage, the more I think it’s a baby.  And not just because it’s small, either.  No, I have found pictures of breeds that are much smaller.  See below.

Pygmy Owl

No, I think it’s a baby just because it’s so ruffled looking.  It doesn’t have the smoothness the adult owls have in the pictures I am finding online.  But then again, it was in MY garage.  I get ruffled every time I go out there too and that obnoxious little dog barking like that…  I bet he was thinking, “If ONLY I were bigger and I could just eat that damned thing to shut it up!”  I don’t know for sure, but since I am having trouble finding a picture that looks like it, I think that it’s a youngster.

Now here’s my story about the last time I had to deal with an owl.  I mean before this.

I was 18 years old and my brother, Cam was 10.  Our dad was in hospital having some heart bypasses, so we were staying at home by ourselves while our mother was at the hospital with him.  We lived in a big ol’ two story house and he and I had never stayed by ourselves before.  (I mean, OF COURSE, right?)  I had been hearing a strange little scratching noise in the wall of my bedroom at night and had decided we must have mice and made a mental note to tell Mither about it as soon as everything calmed down and got back to a more normal routine.  The chimney to the living room fireplace shared my bedroom wall and it never occurred to me that there could be anything in there.  This went on for three nights.  Then, one evening, I was sitting on the couch in the living room reading and all of the sudden there was this gigantic WHOOSH of ashes that flew up in the fireplace.  I couldn’t see anything and then this huge white face with two enormous eyes turned around and looked at me and blinked.  It was a gigantic barn owl.  IT WAS HUGE, PEOPLE.  It just stood there in the fireplace and looked around and at me.  I just sat on the couch without moving like a scared little kitten.  I wasn’t really scared even, I just had no idea what to do.  My brother was asleep and besides that… he was 10.  I called Mom and told her and by this time I watched the owl hop up on top of the damper and sit there.  I stuck my head in the fireplace and could see two great big talons wrapped around the metal edge of it.  I counted myself lucky that I hadn’t received any owl shit in the face, wondered briefly if it really was slick, (My pop was always saying one thing or another was “slicker than owl shit”.), and pulled my head back out.  Mom had said she didn’t know what to do either and she’d be home the next day.  So we agreed that it needed water and food, as it had been there for at least three days, (that’s what I’d been hearing in the wall, actually the chimney).  So I got a little bowl of water and some lunch meat and put it in the fireplace.  I then closed the heavy metal chain link screen…and went to bed.

I have to say that except for the initial whooshing landing in the fireplace I was never really scared of it.  I felt very sorry for it and was worried it was going to die of dehydration, but I just never got the feeling it was threatening.

It never touched the food or water at all, that I could tell.  Perhaps it wanted mayo and wheat bread with pickles.  Perhaps it was a mustard kind of owl.  I don’t know why it turned up it’s…beak to my dinner selection, I only know it did.

So, that next night my dear, brave mither came home and we set about getting the owl out of the house.  It had jumped back down in the fireplace.  Mither was terrified out of her mind awed by it.   I opened the screen and we waited for it to decide to come out.  It was probably a little shy and wondered why we kept peeking around the corner at it.   Finally, it did and we ran in to try to shoo it…somewhere, and it flew straight into the sliding glass door.  No, we had not thought to open it first.  It was freakin cold outside and that’s my excuse.  Whatever.  Anyway, it smacked it’s beak pretty hard and was dazed and confused.  It was like it was competing with us… still think we won the dazed and confused contest…

The poor thing flew around the living room for a short bit and landed on things you wouldn’t think it would choose to land on and then flew through the breakfast area, kitchen, utility room and into the game room, completely avoiding the sliding glass door that stood open.  We followed.  Finally we had it somewhere we thought we could get it out easily.  There was a pair of French doors that one of us opened all the way.  I kept trying to shoo it toward the doors and it seemed oblivious.  It flew all over and finally when I was wondering if we were keeping it and could it please live in my brother’s room, it looked straight at the doors and I almost heard it say, “Ah ha!”  I saw the little light bulb go on over it’s head and it took off.  With both full size doors open it had to tilt diagonally to fit through the opening.  The doors were six feet across.  I don’t even know what the diagonal measurement was.  A lot.  Freakin’ huge-ass owl.

I have to point out that my dear mither was a squealing mess, cowering against whatever wall she could back up against and standing in doorways ready to flee, whilst making small squeaking noises.  Pretty much useless for herding owls.  Luckily, she has proven invaluable for a large multitude of other things… and we all love her dearly.

If you head on over to Psychicgeek, Witchypoo has written a very moving post about Ivy, a two year old little girl that is desperatly ill and is having a life saving treatment withheld from her.  It’s all a bunch of bureaucracy and her mother is trying to do everything possible to help her.  This is an online company that does petitions and I want you to go there and sign up.  Ivy needs all the help she can get.