My mither’s sister, Merrinette, (I call her Minnette and have since I was a wee, small child), lives in Burleson, Texas and is a Maine Coon cat breeder.  She has Maine Coon’s running all over the place at her house.  Litters of kittens behind every door.  Well, not really, but she does have lots of the beautiful cats and does a booming business.  Take a look at her beauties at Amerrykoon Cattery!

Her husband and my uncle, Ray, has been building pools for hundreds of years.  HUNDREDS, I TELL YOU.  Here are some shots of their domicile and, mostly, the area outside where everybody stays.  You will see why everyone wants to stay outside around the pool soon enough.  His crew and designers are the best in the biz.  Take a look at SunRay Pools!

Memorable quote alert!

My Minnette and Mither and I were sitting around eating lunch on her birthday the last time I was up there and somebody said something like, “…doesn’t that just make you want to cry?”, something to that effect.  Minnette immediately said, “I don’t believe in crying-it makes your nose snotty and your head hurt.  I’ve given it up.”  There was a pause and she said, “Unless it’s something that Ray can fix…”.

She also said that, “There’s a very fine line between stupid and stupendous.”.  Not too sure what that means in day to day life, but I am certain it is true often enough.  I wish I could remember what we were talking about when she said it.

Now, on with the tour!

We had so much fun the last time we were there, stories are still being told…

They have a newish salt water pool that is a wonder to behold.  It is the most fun you can have in a Texas summer, that’s for sure!

The problem is in trying to get the entire thing in one shot.  Impossible.  Unless someone flies over, I guess.  Soooo, I had Minnette send me some shots they had a professional do for advertising purposes with the pool business.

Here are her pics:

There’s a little grotto under the diving platform waterfall.  It has a seat and you can just sit in there and watch everything going on through a wall of water.

There are also some beautiful shots of the Koi pond that I would love to show you, however, while they were taken at the same time and downloaded the same way and transferred using the same magic dust, they, for some unknown reason, are too big to put in the post.  Actually they’re not.  I looked at them.  But their file size if different for some reason that alludes me.  You’re just going to have to trust me that the fish are beautiful and there are floating lilies and flowers and serenity and you just have to watch out not to get splashed by the kids leaping into the pool.

This is some of the landscaping over behind the edge of the pool on the far end.

Here we have the inside of Minnette’s and Ray’s house.  Looking from back kinda close to the back door towards the front, through the dining area and living room.  It’s a really beautiful log house that is decorated Texan/Americana top to bottom.

And finally…  You know how everything is bigger in Texas?  Weeeeell, this little gal is named Itsy Bitsy.  She is grown and is now pushing three pounds dripping wet.  She stands about 5″ tall at the shoulder and is just as sweet as can be.   She barks, but the last time I was there, anyway, you couldn’t really hear anything much when she did it.  Just had to pay very close attention to her to see if she was saying anything at all. She is a toy Yorkie.  You know, one of those dust mop dogs, only there’s not nearly enough dog to complete an entire dust mop.  Maybe a dust cloth…

I am told she loves Vienna Sausages and she is most definitely Minnette and Ray’s pride and joy.   She has a very big heart.  One the size of… Texas.♥

Here’s a shot of Merrinette and Taylee, her lovely grand-daughter.

Note the crown of significance on her head.  BIRTHDAY GIRL!

Here she is sporting a different crown.  This one is a bit more…less slutty laid back than the, ahem, after five one above.   It never hurts a girl to have a good choice of crowns.  And please take a moment to notice how well her hair poofed up behind it,(we DO live in Texas, after all), AND the sparkle in her eyes.

And here’s the evil siblings sisters themselves!  Merrinette and Kerry Lynda.  AKA Auntiepoo and Mither.  Here comes trouble!

And it wouldn’t be a post of pictures of the two of them without the gratuitous shot of them trying vainly to have only the one chin.  Yes, that is exactly what they’re doing.  There is nothing unusual on the ceiling.

Did I mention they’re a little nuts and I come by it quite honestly?  Yeah, well…..ya know.

Moving right along.

Fajitas!!!! And we ate and ate and ate.  And then we were so full we decided we needed to take a nap.

BUT!  Before we returned we went by one of my favorite places in Decatur!

Here are Mither and Auntiepoo going into the wonderful, magical Main Street Home and Gardens.  Possibly my favorite place ever.  Other than Mither’s!  And Auntiepoo’s!  Whew!  Couldn’t forget that!

Here are just a few pics to whet your appetite until tomorrow when I show you all around the place!  It really is a magic spot and besides, it’s where I get the black magic stuff to keep H in line we are all going to have lunch the next time I go visit.  Sadly, we didn’t have time this day.

Free Toes, everybody!

Child b. is due to graduate tomorrow evening beginning at 7:00.  Her Nana and Pop are down here for this auspicious occasion.  Her great aunt, Auntie-poo was supposed to be here also, but wasn’t able to come.

I won’t lie to you, we are also celebrating Witchypoo’s birthday.  She has alluded to the fact that it is a “milestone birthday ending in 0″.  She never said how many 0′s…?   Heh.

My house is as clean as it has been in a very long time without being dusted yet.  Floors, spotless.  I got a new Haan steam mop for my birthday that I have been wanting.  Or maybe it was Mother’s Day… I forget since they were one day after the other this year.  Karen over at The Rocking Pony filled me in on it and she loves hers.  I can see why.

Aaaannnnyyyyyway, I love it and all my floors are clean with a minimal amount of effort and bother.

This is starting to sound like a commercial for Haan.

Moving right along.

In the morning the graduation girl, Keelan, her sister, Kessa and Mither and I are all going to eat breakfast at La Madeleine.  Both girls really love that place and it no longer feels like John and my secret place.  That’s what I get for spilling the beans about how good it is.  Anyway, all three generations will be there and it should be lots of fun.  I am really, really looking forward to it.  I will take pictures, I promise!

Boring post?  Tough shit, it’s five minutes after midnight and I am tired and can’t form comprehensive sentences.  Much less bring to mind any of the FASCINATING crap that has happened to me of late.

Good, (*yawn*) night.

The other day I decided to cook a chicken, rotisserie style, on the grill.  We have the gizmo that you plug in and it turns the bird on a spit via an electric box bolted to the side of our monstrosity of a grill.

This, in and of itself, is not that noteworthy.  However, I would pay big bucks, (if I had them), to have had someone take footage of me trying to get that damn chicken on that spit.  That sucker is 45″ long.  I looked like a dwarf trying to maneuver that stupid chicken onto that spit and not skewer anything or anyone else, (including myself).  WAY harder than you’d think!  I never never would have thought it would be so awkward.

See the two prong things.  Well you, (and of course by “you” I mean me), have to tighten one of them on there at the right spot that the chicken needs to be on the grill and then ram the bird down on top of them impaling it and not any part of yourself, most specifically your hands.  And, once again, by “you” and “yours”, I mean ME!

Then, you slide the other pokie thing down on the other end of the chicken, shoving it hard so that it impales the damn thing as you cuss and laugh manically.  Then tighten it down with a pair of pliers because your hands are too sore from multiple stab wounds to do it without them.

After shoving placing the spit into the hole of the turning deal and and resting the other end in the… other end receptacle, I flipped the switch on and left it alone on low for a solid hour.  It was about an 8 pound chicken.

It took every bit of that time to clean my kitchen with anti-bacterial spray everywhere some sort of raw chicken/chicken juice squirted and/or landed.  That was several days ago and I still don’t feel entirely clean.  I am probably a walking salmonella factory.

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I am now watching Craig Ferguson and it’s a rerun, (So much for up to the minute reporting.  Snort!), and he’s saying that Michelle Obama “TOUCHED the queen.”  I am guessing he’s talking about The Queen of England.  He’s acting like it was a mistake and a horrible faux paus, however he tends to be a tad sarcastic and facetious at the least, when it comes to anyone English. (He IS Scottish.)

I’m still wondering what the story is?  And how do you “make up” for “touching” somebody?

Henrietta had a visitor today.  Her next door neighbor from her old neighborhood that she hasn’t seen in about 5 years came to see her today.    My SIL, to her credit, brought her out to see her.   She was absolutely beside herself with joy.  It was so funny, she saw her from across the room right  when she entered the doorway and she practically yelled, “Barbara!”  They sat and talked for hours and hours.  It really did make Henrietta’s week to be able to sit and chat and get caught up on all the neighborhood gossip.  Especially what’s going on in the house she and Marcos lived in for close to 50 years.  Her eye’s grew huge as Barb related tales of how the woman that lives there with the three grown men is married to one of them, but she goes out partying till all hours of the night with the other ones and she’s had two babies since she’s been there and nobody in the neighborhood knows whose children they are!    THIS? Is exactly the kind of crapola Henrietta lives for.

She will be talking about this visit and all the accompanying gossip for a solid week.  To me.  And the really funny part will be the way the stories will grow and grow in her mind as time passes.  Eventually, her house will have become a brothel with a line of men outside and circling the block.

I will keep you appraised of the situation.  It’s only right.

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The… boyfriend-in-law was outside giving my yard a makeover.  That’s about the only way to describe the before and after shots that make a jungle look tame.  It was VERY bad.  He showed up about 1:00 and finished and left at 4:00.  Three hours to mow and weed-eat a front and back yard the size of mine if ridiculous.  THAT is how bad it was.

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Tomorrow is Easter and do ya wanna know what my plans are?  Do ya, huh, do ya?  Get a load of this!

Nothing.

The SIL and her bunch of people that descend on my house for every holiday, to consume as much as possible of everything I cook and then leave as soon as they’ve eaten, are… otherwise engaged.  Where?  Who cares.  It is going to be quiet and I might put a ham in the oven.  I might not.  I might cook the Easter bunny if he pisses me off.

WOO-HOO!  Reel me in, I am COMPLETELY out of control.

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Last night I called Mither and asked her what she was doing.  She told me she was about to watch a Maverick’s basketball game.

I had better preface this little rambling with the fact that there has never been a bigger Dallas Maverick’s fan than both Mither and Auntie-Poo.

Aaaaanyway, she mentioned to me, (not for the first time), at some point in our conversation that she was not supposed to be talking to anyone on the phone when the game is on because Auntie-Poo might call and yell at her if she wasn’t paying good attention to the game and couldn’t keep up with what Antie-Poo was talking about.

We laughed about this, just because they are both fairly hopeless and then I told her I was going to wait until the game started and I was going to call Auntie-Poo and chat aimlessly to her for a while and then call her back several times.  Just cause I’m that way.  Ya know?

All of the sudden I heard evil laughter and Mither said that I should call her at exactly 8:30 then she would call her at 8:33 and when Auntie-Poo told her she was on the other line talking to me, Mither would yell at her that she WAS NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ON THE PHONE WITH ANYONE ELSE DURING THE BALL GAMES!

So I did this and all went to plan and when Aunti-Poo came back to me after Mither called her I asked who it was and she said, “Oh, it was your mother and she told me I have to get off the line cause the basketball game is on.”  We both agreed it was absurd that SHE have to get off the line and when I told her that we set her up to be caught she decided that she would have all my cousins call Mither one at a time, just to “chat”, during the game.  There are four of them.

That was the last I’ve heard of them.  I haven’t talked to either one of them today and they are out of pocket.  I left messages for both of them to call me, so I will follow up sometime.

Sometimes I wonder at the mechanics of this family.

While I have been relaxing a bit, it seems like I have fallen further and further behind on reading my blogs.  I am sooo sorry!  I have not forgotten you people and will get back soon!  At least I will be able to see when I begin trying to get caught up!

I have gone to the optometrist and gotten a prescription for my eyeballs.  Would you believe that my first pair of glasses is going to be bifocals?  How blind am I?  Well, I’ll tell you.  My distance is .25 and my closer up in your face is 1.75.  No.  I don’t know what that means either.  But I know I have to have bifocals.  I am getting the line-less kind, with a far, mid and close range seeing area.  I wasn’t so interested in seeing mid range as interested in NOT looking like I had on bifocals.  Did I mention that this is my FIRST PAIR OF GLASSES?  I was a little staggered.

Speaking of staggered…  I have a… family(?) situation that smacks of reality tv, like nothing else.  Think smutty, like maybe, Temptation Island meets The Girls Next Door.  Only no one is that attractive.

You may remember me referring to Auntie-poo, before.  She is Mither’s sister and my favorite person in the world, (Mither is sitting here insisting that I make it understood, except for her.).  Well, she has a son, my cousin, actually, who has a wife that is a true piece of work.  My cousin came home from work a month or so ago and his slutty wife told him she wanted him to move out that she had been communicating with a guy who is in prison and she loved him and they were going to get married.  As soon as he gets out of prison.  Come to find out this is going to have to be a June wedding, 2009.

June weddings are nice.

Anyway, getting back to my cousin, he has three children with this chick and was heartbroken enough.  She then proceeded to tell him that years ago right after their last child was born she was corresponding with another guy on the internet and they decided to meet at a Jack in the Box.  She told him that they had sex in the bathroom there.  At Jack in the Box.  When they met.  For the first time.

I can’t seem to wrap my leetle brain around this.  Maybe I’m not creative enough to think this “outside the box”. (Pardon the pun.)  But let’s consider this a minute:

1. When meeting for sex at Jack in the Box with a man that has never been met before does one just assume the restaurant facilities will be adequate?  Or does one hope the, ahem, gentleman has a van?

2.  In which restroom is the dirty deed carried out?  I mean Men’s or Women’s?  Miss Manners would definitely have something to say about this.  Or Emily Post.  If she wasn’t dead.

3.  If you are ensconced in a bathroom at Jack in the Box with your… lover, conquest, intended, slutmuffin, are you concerned with the type of paper towels offered?  I mean if it’s an upscale establishment with a roll of paper towels, that’s one thing.  You could roll those out on the floor and not have to worry about missing gaps in the coverage.

4.  Do you bring your own paper towels?  Oh dear.  Would this seem presumptuous?  Now, we wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression.

5. If left with only the folded paper towels that pull out of the dispenser one at a time, what do you do?  Move the party to the counter?  Sink?  Standing?

6.  Is there a lock on the interior of the door in the Jack in the Box restrooms?

7.  How long to you do “it”?  Too long and there will be people making racket outside the door and that will put a real damper on things.  Too short and your partner will be very unimpressed.

8.  What’s the rule about how old or big you can be to use a changing table?

9.  When it says “Family” on the door of a restroom, does it mean just relatives?

10. When it says “No shirt, no shoes.  No service” does it mean panties are optional.

11.  John wants to know, “Do you get fries with that?”

You know Witchypoo over at Psychicgeek has an advise column that I’ve been toying with different questions for here for a good while, now…  How do you think she’d answer,…..?  Hummmm.

They report having tons of fun and were really not happy to have to come home so soon.  They all go back to work tomorrow.

The boyfriend and Kes went out to Pop’s gun range on the back 40 and shot, well, I am guessing a number of different guns, rifles, slingshots, bow and arrows, anti-aircraft artillery…you get the idea.  Pop reports that he wants to be careful and never get them mad at him because they are both really good shots.  Keelan didn’t want to go do that, we don’t know why.  I guess she was busy getting into mischief somewhere else.

They lit up the sky with fireworks, (no burn ban outside the city limits this year, Woo-Hoo!), and went to my auntie-poo’s house in Burleson where they have been busy installing a GIGANTIC pool.  I keep getting these partial pictures of it and I am having a hard time picturing the entire thing so I asked if somebody couldn’t take a shot from the upstairs balcony.  No, I had already been sent these shots and they are going to have to get some aerial shots to get the whole shebang in a photograph.  It is impossible for me to imagine it, I guess.  I can remember the area it has  been built in quite well.  It has a beach entrance on one end and a built in hot tub, waterfall along with grotto behind it, a vanishing edge and a milliondy-gillion gallons of water.  That link of the vanishing edge is NOT their pool.  I just wanted a good example of one.  I want some good pictures!  My uncle is a pool builder by trade and his son, (my cousin), is in the business with him.  They do all kinds of pools and have many, many years of experience.  The name of their company is Sun-Ray Pools.  There.  A plug I wasn’t really even planning on doing!  But this should help explain how they came about getting a pool with every single bell and whistle known to man.  Anyway, they know what they’re doing.

While I’m plugging my family, my auntie-poo raises and breeds Maine Coon Cats.  They are the largest breed of domestic cat there is and really very beautiful.  Her establishment is called Amerrykoon Maine Coon Cattery.  Interested in a huge cat?  She, literally, ships all over the world.

John and I went to the movie yesterday!  How many years has it been since I went to a movie?  I have no idea.  We saw the new Indiana Jones one and while it was a bit hokey, my gawd, of course it was, it was Indiana Jones!  It was good.  A ton of action and one long, continuous chase scene.  Bad guys and good guys clearly defined by their Nazi uniforms and Russian accent/fedora and American accent.  Harrison Ford is still HAWT!  I guess he will be till he dies.  Anyway, I have to say that the movie experience would not have happened if my SIL hadn’t offered to stay here while we went.  So I am grateful for that.  However, I lost enthusiasm for my appreciation when SIL left the room and H told me to give her $20.00 of her money.  I said, “Why?” and she said, “Well….because she came and took care of me….”  I said, “Henrietta, she is your daughter.  You’re not supposed to have to pay her to come and take care of you.”  I came very close to yelling, I DON’T GET PAID, I’M NOT YOUR DAUGHTER, AND I TAKE CARE OF YOU 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE TWO HOURS SIL COMES AND STAYS WITH YOU LAST THING ON SUNDAY NIGHTS, usually.  This week she really came through.  Anyway, she just can’t stand it.  She gets so few visitors that if anyone, even her daughter shows up she impulsively pushes cash and gifts on them before they go.  So I wrote her a check.

Oh, I forgot!  The best part!  The sound was screwed up during all of the previews and once or twice during the movie and someone had to keep going and getting someone to go to the projection room and fix it somehow.  So when the whole thing was over there was a guy handing everyone a free coupon for another movie.  So I have another date, people!  Wonder who I’ll take….tee hee hee

Behold! The Wall O’ Ties.

Well, Mither and Auntie-Poo departed for the long haul home, today. They will be driving north to the Ft. Worth area. We had a lovely time and H was really fairly well behaved. She hasn’t said anything resembling accusations that we were all table-dancing, man-chasing, liquor-swilling, ho’s. I am proud of her.

The house is a wreck. There is no other way to describe it. The combination of me being sick for days before the company came so it wasn’t EVEN in shape when they got here, and then spending the rest of the time frolicking and whatnot, has left it in shambles. (You know how it is once you get started dancing on tables it’s hard to stop). Now we have marauding dust bunnies, piles of dirty clothes that could take your breath away, and a state of general chaos that makes Bosnia look like a sanctuary. Now, don’t think that my dear Mither and Auntie-Poo are the direct cause of this catastrophe. No. They are more the indirect cause. Because since they have been here I have done absolutely nothing in the way of domesticity. I now pay.

In more depressing news, our beloved coffee pot, (I have named her Cecila), is trying hard to get across the point that she needs to be… put down. I know it sounds harsh but, really, she isn’t producing coffee anymore and therefore it is hard to justify her existence at this point. When filled to the top with water for a fresh, aromatic pot of delicious, life sustaining coffee, she “makes about 4 cups and quits. There is always about 6 cups of water left in the reservoir that won’t “make” until it’s been restarted two or three times.

She is only two years old and cost $130.00. This is just soooo wrong. Can you hear me, people?

Please pray for Cecilia. I will surely cry when she goes.

Cecilia

Mither and Auntie-Poo arrived on Wednesday amid much hoopla and fanfare. (Picture parade with confetti.) We were all really, really glad to see them. They haven’t been down here to visit me in a long time. Mither usually comes with Pop to see me a few times a year, but it is a real treat when Auntie-Poo gets to come with her. The three of us together are, well, somewhere between The Three Musketeers and the Three Stooges. We always have a riotous time. We have shopped and sat around a bit and I got my heart blessed a good deal for being so disgusting and sick. The Plague will do that to ya.

Kessa has made this family so proud of her. She has worked so hard her entire academic career, to earn the honors she was presented with last night. She was also a bit excited. A very good bit. I will post a picture of her soon, as all the ones I took were on Auntie-Poo’s nifty new Nikon camera and we gotta figure out how to get ‘em outa there. She looked so pretty, though. She wore the blue robe with a white National Honor Society stole, and had a blue and white cord for graduating Cum Laude and a gold one for National English Honor Society. After the shin-dig, (OK, we ran for our lives after they called her name the second time to receive her fake diploma that she has to wait until…Monday(?) to receive her real one to put in the folder thing.), we had to get out of there to get the grill fired up for shishkabobs. We had a wonderful time and got really full. PLUS I ran no fever all day long. I do believe the worst of the virus that ate my soul and then puked it back out is over with.

Yesterday we went to World Market and bought, (between the three of us), three tins of their wonderful ginger snaps. I am not a huge fan of gingersnaps, normally. Just pretty much take ‘em or leave ‘em kinda gal. But these are the most wonderful things ever and you get a good sized tin of them for about $7.00. WORTH EVERY PENNY.

We also went shopping and I got new clothes from Mither and Auntie-Poo for my birthday. This shopping together for the birthday is a fairly traditional thing with us. It gets me outta the house and is fun and I get stuff that I know for sure I like and fits and will wear. And of course Mither and Auntie-Poo didn’t leave empty handed, either.

We are going to go to breakfast here in a few minutes. You’re invited if you want to come and I’ll pay. I feel sooooo secure in saying that as I am pretty sure readership has dropped off to next to nothing. Again, sorry for the long delay! REALLY!