HalfAsstic.com

IF I had a camera that could take good close ups, I would show you people a thing or two that… that, well… you wouldn’t know about other wise!  Things that you are blissfully unaware of right now.  Things that somewhere deep down inside, you will be uncomfortable and squirming just a bit and thinking, OH MY GAWD! WHY IS SHE SHOWING ME THIS? I WON’T BE ABLE TO SLEEP TONIGHT! this is bizarre.  Krissa, clearly has too much time on her hands….  Again.

But I don’t have a camera that takes good close ups so I will have to use my extensive vocabulary to tell you all about it and paint the proverbial picture with words and crap. Er, crapola?

OK, today we have, for your viewing pleasure description, the smushed roach I found on the bathroom floor when I returned home from my trip to Mither’s and Pop’s house.  John admitted to stepping on it in an attempt to keep it from finding it’s way upstairs where we would, ultimately have to run, up the stairs, to slap a daughter and then gag her to stifle her screaming save one or both of the girls when they stumble upon the roach while it is planning it’s attack on her/them.   At this point I should indicate to you that roaches in deep south Texas are different than roaches in any other part of the country and state.  They are huge and they fly.  That’s right, people.  They FLY.  And they are not very good at it.  Which means that even though they are trying like mad to get away from you they usually end up dive bombing you as they fly across the room.  This causes much screaming and yelling from the girls that are, of course, standing outside in the hall watching with saucer-sized eyes.  Me?  I am charging around the room in hot pursuit of the little bastard and it’s gettin’ personal now!  I have my shoe off and am slamming it against the wall or ceiling or floor or occasional piece of laundry that’s left in the floor, saying, “I hope these clothes LEFT ALL OVER THE FLOOR are at least dirty!

Oh, and if you’re saying, “I live in the south and I have roaches like that!”  You don’t.  This is Texas.  They are bigger and carry Texas flags.

Naw.  They don’t intimidate me much.  Until they land on me.  Eww.

Anyway, you can see why it is so important that we hunt down and murder any roach we happen to see.  It does not happen often, but John and I instantly go to the aforementioned scenerio in our minds when we see one on the outside of the fireplace and it runs inside and we can’t get it.  We look at each other and it’s like telepathy.

John: I have to go to work early tomorrow.  You have to get up with them in the middle of the night if they start screaming “ROACH!”.

me: Fine, but exactly when do you plan to take your turn?  What if it goes up there in the evening and you’ve just gotten home from work?  You’re going to be really tired and beat then, and not feel like charging up the stairs to save them.  Me?  I just think they’re stupid and would be all for letting them battle it out for themselves, but your Mom will have all kinds of wild stories to go with all the screaming going on.  She will find a way to use the phone and call the cops, ya know.

OK, background story completed now.  So we have this smushed roach on the floor in my bathroom.  It has obviously been there for at least a couple of days, I’m guessing cause it is covered with these bizarre tiny black bugs that are feasting on it’s… carcass.  They’re not any kind of ant either.  They are about half the size of a sugar ant, though.  And they move remarkably fast considering they are so tiny I can’t even see their legs.

Weird.  I smushed them all and picked up the roach with a piece of tissue and flushed them.  Haven’t seen another one since.  But I sure wish I had something to get a close up of them with so you could tell me what the hell they are I could see them better and instantly know the fancy Latin words to catagorize and label them.  Cause, I totally would.  You know me and my vocabulary. 

Wow!  There are a ton of totally unrelated pictures on my camera that need to come off.

Don’t expect any of this to make sense.  (HA! Like I had to warn you about THAT!) It was just whatever moved me to take a picture of whatever at the time.

Me at chiropractor right before she stretches me ON THE RACK. John took this.

Inside of purse while bored in waiting room... somewhere...

I need a dress to attend an afternoon wedding. OUTSIDE. IN JUNE.

Top two contenders. The one on the right won.

Wedding reception we were attending.

Our tiki bar at the wedding reception of our neighbor across the street.

Ladies from the neighborhood.

The happy couple, Rich and Pat.

And that’s enough about the wedding.

Next we have Henrietta after the SIL showed up early enough to get her out of bed and dressed and hauled into the chair and into the living room and I looked at her and damned if she didn’t dress her in a pink and white striped top and bright red pants.  It’s kinda hard to tell in the picture, cause I didn’t use a flash, but her pants are RED.  When I said, “Couldn’t you have found her something that matched?”  She said, “Oh! That’s good enough for Mom!”

So sweet.

While going to Kohl's the other day. Heh!

So is it going to rain or is this the apocalypse? This is while leaving Kohl's.

Keelan's snake, making himself comfortable.

Look! He's smiling for the camera!

Our new tiki bar. Isn't it cute? OK, but it was free. That's what I thought.

…and besides that, I went outside in the heat of the day and painted it with water sealant. It’s been getting around 95 and 96 degrees here every day and the humidity is hovering around 126%.

Yes I agree.  it is absolutely beautiful.

The cicadas are out and making a horrible racket and leaving these shells around all over the place.

There.  That wasn’t too terribly painful, was it?  OK! OK!  The good news is that my camera is clean and therefore my mind is too.
Yeah!  RIGHT!!!

Finally.  And not a moment too soon, I might add, I got one hell of a haircut!  I HATED my hair.  It was constantly falling into my eyes,  took forever to “do”, and always looked like shit no matter how long I worked on it.

The way it is now is how it used to be when I spent more time trying to keep myself looking decent and took the time to escape and get my hair cut from time to time.  To say I am a “low maintainence” gal is an understatement of biblical proportion.  However, I feel so much better about myself, my family and life in general now that I can’t possibly justify letting myself get in that condition again.  I made an appointment to get it cut again in 5 weeks before I left he salon.

Even John, who likes it to be “just a bit longer” than it is now, and used to tease me when I got this cut and tell me to go to the barber shop with him and ask for a “regular boy’s”, cause it’d be much cheaper,  had told me that I needed to go get a haircut.

Yes,THAT bad.

Ideally, I would want to look like the chick on Dirty Sexy Money that is the wife to the main character.  I don’t even know what her name is and this is me, too lazy to do my internet homework and find out for you.

BUT, it IS me and I won’t let you down completely.  Here is a picture of her and her on screen husband.  He looks , like crap, I don’t know why, but, she is adorable as ever.  If anyone can get away with a really, really short haircut, it’s her.  (If ONLY I were that skinny and adorable!)

So here it is… a quick shot I took of myself in my bathroom, no less.   No matter what anyone thinks of it, this hair is so much more workable than the previous mop as far as the person underneath it goes, there is no comparison.

Hello intertubes!  I don’t have TOO terribly much to say, and it’s probably a good thing as I’m pretty much all typed talked out.

There are these nagging pics on my camera that I took and want to keep, but am not really sure why and they are a bit…leftoverish.

DISCLAIMER:

You will now be subjected to them.

John, New Year’s Eve at our friend’s house with a blanket wrapped around him cause he was freezing to death as he didn’t wear a jacket like his smart, intelligent, always right wife told him to.  It looks a bit grainy, I guess cause I took it on ISO with and he is illuminated by distant fireworks/streetlamp.  Oh hell, I dunno.  This new camera is still a bit of a mystery to me.

My guilty secret, hidden in my freezer.  No, not the bottle of vodka.  Next to it.  The bag of minty good Three Musketeers bite size wonders.   My reason for living through Christmas.

John is such a BIG boy!  He concentrates carefully on getting two cups of coffee back to us at, yet another date at La Madeleine’s.  Maybe next time we could dress up a little for our date?

More evidence of our lunch date while playing with my new camera and trying to see how clear I could get a close up shot.   Well, we can clearly see that the table needs re-varnishing and a cup of coffee is $2.00! Ridiculous.

This just makes me laugh.  Tell me the truth.  If this didn’t have “Media Mail” stamped all over it, wouldn’t it look just like one of those packages of cocaine, or weed you see on TV that the cops are always finding in door panels of cars coming over the border?  I left it sitting in the car seat while we were eating breakfast at afore mentioned restaurant and half expected to see a cop peering in at it when we came out.

Just to prove what a good, kind, loving, adequate pet owner I am I have given our ancient cat her own heat lamp.  It shines on nothing but her 13 year old body.  She loves me best.

Gratuitous cat pic.  Again, I love that ISO setting!  She looks as if she’s deciding between a nap and a long hot bath with one of those books… Oh, wait a minute, that was me.

Her other favorite place to hang out.  As long as there’s a jacket or something to curl up in…

I’ve been trying to get a good shot of the wall treatment I recently finished in my bathroom.  The wall paper was HORRIBLE, straight out of the mid ’80’s.  I took some drywall compound and textured right over it with a wide putty knife and then, when it dried, (just a few hours), I held up a stencil of a fleur di lis and swiped more compound over it.  Then, just lifting the stencil off leaves a raised fleur di lis.

After that Mither came to visit and we painted it light lavender and finished it off with a dark purple glaze for that aged look I don’t want on my face but, for some reason, think is good on the walls.  Oh and then I silver leafed the fleur di lis.  AND if all that fleur di lis stuff wasn’t enough pretentious French talk, I then said, “VOILA!”

Here’s a close up of a…fleur.  heh

And here is my guilty secret.  The strip of wall paper that I didn’t get done, below the mirrored cabinet and above the backsplash.  I didn’t notice it until I sat down on the… well, you know… where you sit when you go into a bathroom…  I don’t go in there much as it’s the guest bath.  Anyway, the wallpaper looks like someone got drunk and threw up many, many different colors of paint all over the walls.  It was BAD.  I sat down on that same, er, receptacle to take the pic and you can se the top of my head in the mirror.

OK, where I was just sitting to take that last shot.

HEY, MY PANTS WERE UP!

Hello people!  Well, Nana and Pop have gone home and should actually be there shortly.  We had all kinds of fun during the short amount of time they were here.

We also did some sleuthing!

Now I bet you are all wondering what happened with Henrietta’s aide/thief that we suspect swiped the $100 out of my purse.  Well, we set up the camera that Lisa had loaned me that is motion activated.   Got it all set up on top of the fridge and John and Pop left and then Mither announced, (loudly), that we needed to run over to Lisa’s house to see what was going on with her.  So I told the aide and H that we’d be back later and we left.

John got home first and found the camera lying on it’s back on top of the extremely tall refrigerator.  It was lying in a manner that it was incapable of “falling” into.   It was incapable of falling in the first place.  He took the card out and he and Keelan were looking at the pictures when we got home.  There are a lot of them simply because it snapped one every time the light went on or off or anyone left or came in, but here are a few showing what happened and in the order it happened.

Here is John leaving.  My purse is on the counter on the right.  You can see the top of the faucet in the sink in the wet bar.  My purse is the blob to the left of it.  Right beneath the “10″.

Here is Mither leaving and I am right behind her.  I guess the light was on in the kitchen since the wall is now green, (as it really is), and it looks turquoise in the first one…

And here is the last one it took.  You can see the fingers and the double exposure from the movement.  It happened 8 minutes after we left.  Undoubtedly she saw the camera on top of the fridge and turned it over.  I hadn’t left any cash or credit cards in my purse but she didn’t know that until she looked.  Henrietta said that she stood “behind the counter” to watch the soap opera with her and she didn’t know why she didn’t sit down like she usually did. She said she kept going and looking out the window and then going back to stand at the counter.  The widow is to the left outside the frame of the picture.

I do.

Henrietta doesn’t know that we suspect the aide of anything.  She doesn’t know about the missing money, or the camera or any of it.  She has such a negative view of the world and all it’s inhabitants anyway, we all just think it’s better that she not feel like she was duped.  The sad part is that she really likes this aide a lot.  They spoke Spanish to each other and H was thrilled with this as her Spanish was really rusty and getting to be more and more of a second language all the time.  She did an excellent job with her and they really got along well.

I will just tell her that the company had to send her to another area or something and she has to have a new aide.  Oh, I don’t know.. I’ll have to think it through.  I have to have a better story than that, I guess…

John asked H where the aide was and where all she went while we were gone and then I did too, separately. and she then got the idea that something was wrong and when she asked if something was missing and I lied and said, “No.”, she got a bit defensive for her.  She told me that she was a good person and there was no reason to “look into her”.   I feel really bad, but I have enough to go on and I called the company and told them not to send her back and that I wasn’t accusing her of anything, (after all I don’t have any hard evidence), but that I didn’t want her back because I couldn’t risk trusting her.  I asked to talk to the owner but she was out of town for a “few days” so I told the lady what had happened and she was nice, but I can tell there was no way they could afford to lose any employees so I feel sure they won’t fire her even if they have reports of this kind of thing happening before.

I hope to talk to the owner when she gets back in town.

Hello there.  I would like to start out by clarifying one thing:

When I paint the door, it will only be the outside.  The inside is in great condition and there is absolutely no reason to paint it.  The outside, however, is not so good.  I will take a picture and show you, my speculative intertubers.

Here it is all peeling and weather beaten.  Not to mention the chick that lives here needs to sweep the porch, but she’s a slacker and let’s not discuss that now.

Purrrza wants in and is TRYING to be patient while I snap stupid pictures!  She thinks, “Damn I wish she’d paint this ugly door!  I’m embarrassed to live here and all the neighborhood cats think I’m low maintenance.  BUT I’M NOT!  If I flatten my ears back a little bit more she’ll know I’m really pissed and mean business.  GET THIS *&%$#! DOOR OPEN!”

Purrrza: Oh Gawd!  The stupid dog, now… what more must I put up with?  How come she’s inside and I’m out here?

Baby: Momma!  How come Purrrza is outside and I don’t get to come out?  MOM, what are you doing?

MOM?

OK, Kissy is here too now Mom and she wants out too… I’m telling you, you don’t want us to call the union!

And lastly, just because it’s hanging on my porch and I was out there anyway I took a picture of this plaque that my brother and sister-in-law gave to John and I a few years ago for Christmas.  Does anyone recognize the quote and know from where it came?

Well, today I spent the majority of my time at Lisa’s house with her three year old grandson, Bryen and her son’s girlfriend, Megan.  We worked hard and emptied out her entire kitchen, (except for the pantry), and put every single thing in any cabinet or on any counter top in her dining room on the table.  Now if those SOB’s don’t show up to put in those cabinets tomorrow I will, personally find somebody to castrate.  You just don’t take a woman’s, (or a man’s, for that matter), kitchen away from them and not follow through with your promises to give it back, only better.

Here’s Lisa, Megan and Bryen hard at work while I walk around aimlessly snapping pictures…as it should be.

Good Gawd.  That was a lot of shit to move into the other room.

These pictures, I offer as proof of how badly she needed this redo.  I have known Lisa for 13 or 14 years now and she has wanted to do something with this house for a very, very long time.  Well she is doing it up right!

Her walls are sheet rocked and painted really beautiful earthy colors.  It as so much fun picking out the paint chips!  We even had professional help!  (Lisa keeps telling me I need professional help… wonder if that’s what she meant…)

Living room with the couch sitting in the middle with the cushions upended.  The cat and dogs are not welcome.  Yet.  The furniture isn’t coming back in yet.  Still some touching up the painters have to do and SOMETHING has to get done about that fireplace wall.  We have plans for it.

I love the paprikaish colored wall thrown in just for good measure!  Lisa’s idea and she was on fire.  It is a short little wall around the corner and is just one side of the foyer.

I wish I had pics of before it was painted!  It was bad and dark, and paneled in the living room and the LR and hall, along with the kitchen, breakfast area and utility room all had tragic flooring.  The living room was an unfortunate carpeting choice that she made years ago, (with me there assisting) and it was a horrible, stinky, stained mess.  (Lisa and husband, Roger have two large outside dogs that tend to smell.  A lot.  And even with the giving of a bath, this is not rectified.  Stinky. Dogs.  They are supposed to stay outside, but someone I will not name, (starts with Rog and ends with er), tends to let the stinky dogs in when Lisa isn’t at home.  I think he’s scared to stay by himself.  I am sure he would dispute this.

This is in the breakfast room.  Can you tell we had only just gotten started bringing stuff in here at this point?

They also have two small inside dogs and a cat.  Housebreaking the dogs and having the cat puke hairballs all over the place for ages has just worn the sanitary out of the carpet.

The kitchen, breakfast area and utility room all had terrible old sheet vinyl that was original to the house, built in the 60’s.  Now it is this awesome large Italian porcelain tile.

Strange side note:  Every time Lisa takes pictures in her house with her camera she gets all those weird little circles and light spots on the pictures.  You can see them above and I think in all these shots.  I never have that problem so I brought my camera.  These pictures are with my camera and there are still all the weird little spots.  What’s up with that?  Are they haints?  If so there certainly are a lot of them and they better not smurf up the new paint job.

Oh!  That’s the little antique oak table I am SO GENEROUSLY GIVING UP OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART.  (I’ll kill her if she tries to put that thing back in my garage.)

Ok.  It pains me to say this but there is some bad news in the way of our friendship.  I am afraid I am going to have to report Lisa to the SPCA.  I even have photographic proof.  Before I show you these disturbing pictures I will explain what has, obviously, been going on.

Lisa has been contributing to the obesity, (I mean incredibly obese), of these poor, over indulged squirrels.  These poor guys don’t stand a chance if the cat ever gets out.  I watched one of them attempting to… scamper(?) up a tree and let me tell you, there was no scamper about it.  Poor squirrel looked like he was hauling a load of bricks up a ladder.  He may as well have been.

She buy bags of mixed seed and seduces lures attracts these little critters from the surrounding yards with her own brand of crack.  These guys can barely move.

There’s even a little one.  A baby, that she is trying to get hooked at the moment.

I think this little guy is doomed.  Here he is, so transfixed in his stupor he doesn’t even notice me.

Passed out Sacked out in a tree trying to recuperate.

Please remember these guys in your prayers…  I don’t think there is a Jenny Craig program for squirrels…

Well… not really.  But he could have!  And the important thing is… that that’s the story I’m going with!

It was, after all, John who caught the cabinets on fire.  He did!  NO!  REALLY!

A couple of months ago he decided he was going to make himself a tostada with some left over taco meat we hand and he popped a couple of tostada shells in the little toaster oven we have on the counter top.  I guess he set it to “Incinerate” and walked off.  Well, pretty much immediately the fire was pouring out of the toaster oven and the varnish on the cabinets was aflame.

It was exciting!

The strange thing is that the only emotion I can come up with is relief that it was him and not me who did it.

I wasn’t around when it happened, but he told me that he threw water on it.  INSIDE THE TOASTER OVEN.  I indicated that it wasn’t the brightest thing he had ever done as he could have electrocuted himself…but, then again he did torch some innocent tostadas…

I explained the theory of using baking soda to extinguish flames from an electrical source. (Assuming he didn’t want to go and get the FIRE EXTINGUISHER from the utility room.)  He informed me that he doesn’t know where in our kitchen the baking soda lives.  I showed him.  I am CERTAIN, within an inch of my life, that he will never need to know the whereabouts of the baking soda.

Unless there’s another fire.

Well, here I sit only moderately better prepared than yesterday.  Yeah, sorry.

I’ve taken some pictures of some random things lately that may or may not ever be able to legitimately be worked into a post.

I’m not feeling very legitimate today.  (Sorry Mither and Pop.)

So here’s a… random sampling of life in the armpit of Texas.

Here’s John trying on shoes at the new Shoe Carnival store that opened up by us.  His dogs were killing him when he came home from work every day and the insides of his other black dress shoes were shot.  All broken down.

I know.  Fascinating….

So what do we think?

There’s also these Nunn Bush ones that are on sale, too.

I’ll just cut straight to the end and tell you that he got the other wing tips.  Normally $60.00 on sale for $40.00.

Gee, I wonder how many of you were just about to wet your pants in anticipation of that announcement.

OK, where else could such a gripping post go but to a discussion about the… (are you ready for this?), weather.  It hasn’t rained in forever and I know I sound like an 80 year old farmer, but we really do need it bad and it is supposed to be coming here TONIGHT!  Woo-Hoo!  This combined with the fact that it will be coupled with a COLD FRONT is the best news I’ve had lately.

We have been living, (if you can call it that), with the windows open for about 48 hours now.  Henrietta is having a seriously hard time of it.  If you recall, one of the posts after we got electricity back after Ike, (If I was a good posty…postie(?) person I would hunt down a link… but, I’m not.), I explained how she tried to die at the thought of leaving her window open when we had no electricity.  Her room is directly across from ours and we needed the cross ventilation.  She was so opposed to it she told us we were abusing her by making her sleep with her window open.  Yes, we have screens on all of them.

Aaaaaanyway, she has asked me why the air isn’t on when she is in her room because it is freaking hot in there and I have told her it’s not on because it is cool outside and there’s no need for it.  We have the windows open.  If you want it cool in your room we’ll open yours.  I’m not making her do it because we have electricity and a working ceiling fan in our room.  She does, too.  “OOOOH NOOOO, Krissa!  (panic setting into her voice), I don’t want the window open!”  I, very carefully, explained that she didn’t have to, but it would be much cooler and did she want her ceiling fan on?  Now, she has always maintained that the ceiling fan makes her sick.  Or have allergies or constipated or some such shit.  (hehe… constipated or some such shit HA)  But she told me to turn it on low.  I turned it on medium and asked if that was all right and she felt the breeze and decided it felt so much better she’d stick with it.

But then, she started stating her case.

“Why don’t you run the air conditioner, Krissa?”

Because it’s cooler out side than it is in here and it’s free and the light bill is horrible and we are constantly trying to save money and this economy sucks, not to mention it’s the ecological thing to do and, etc. etc. etc.

“But, you know, Krissa you’ve got that chemical plant…”

Blank look Henrietta, we don’t have a chemical plant.  (Much less ME)

“Oh, yes!  Over in Texas City!”

Well, hell there are gazillions of chemical plants in Texas City, but somehow I don’t think it will help my case to point that out.

“Yes.  In TEXAS CITY there is a chemical plant…?”

“Well, it’s those chemicals, Krissa, and I’m old already.”

Every time she wants to get her way about something her arguments at one point or another hinges on “Well, I’m old, already.”

She then proceeded to tell me that’s not right to have the windows open because she’s “the patient”.  I looked incredulous and said, “Patient?  You’re not sick.  What’s wrong with you that you think you’re a patient?”

She got a little huffy and I left the room.

But let me tell you one thing.  She rolled her happy ass into the living room where it’s nice and cool shortly thereafter.

Hello there peoples!  Peoples?  There is more than one of you… right?

Whatever.

As the common expression in my family goes, “Do you want the good news or the bad news”? Well, the good news is, there is no bad news.

John is still on vacation and we are, in general, having a really fairly good time of it.  We have now added to the list of things accomplished to include:

*Called Verizon to get them to set us up with land line service.

Hopefully it will be every bit as dynamite as the cell service.  It was awesome during the hurricane.  They never even lost a tower, I guess.  All the circuits were busy a few times, but we always had service.  They are supposed to call us back… sometime.  My guess is that they were inundated with calls for service after Ike, from Comcast customers that lost service before the hurricane ever got anywhere near us and didn’t get it back until at least 2 weeks later.  Oh hell, some still don’t have it.  One month later.

* I caulked the edge of the shingles on the back of the house and the garage Thursday.  I did the front of the house yesterday evening.  I rock.

Here you can see how the shingles don’t stick out far enough past the flashing in places and this is where we are having signs of water…well, not yet damage, but the paint is beginning to bubble so rot is not far way, under the eaves.  And this is happening only where we were “short shingled”.  Coincidence?  I think not!  I went ahead and caulked the entire house and garage anyway, just to make sure we got it all.

Now here’s my dilemma:

I want to paint our front door.   It is an oak door and it weighs a gazillion pounds.  Yeah, yeah, I know!  Every guy out there is going to try to die at the thought of painting it, but it needs refinishing or painting really badly and if I am going to go to that much trouble I want it to be a pretty color.

Ideally I would like red, HOWEVER, the damn neighbors across the street, (really very sweet people), beat me to it and their door is so pretty! Especially when her geraniums are in bloom.

See their pictures below?  Don’t they have a beautiful yard?  Even with the recycle bin still out?

So, I was wondering about, maybe, green?  I would really like to know what everyone thinks of this.  My house needs some color as it is shades of beige and brown with pasty white brick.

Oh, please note the attractive piece of cardboard in the lower right side of the window in the door.  Yeah, gotta get that fixed, too. And I don’t usually have a ladder in the front yard but I was doing the caulking when I stopped and took these pictures. Also, the shutter that is standing on the ground by the post with the house numbers has been replaced on the right side of the window.  It blew off during Ike and I ran out during the eye and retrieved before it blew away.

See how dark it is in the itty bitty porch?  I am thinking a sagey (this may not be an actual word, yet you know what I mean…), green.  So what do YOU think?