Hello!  Today, boys and girls, I have been busy talking to Henrietta’s P. A. (physician’s assistant), home health care nurse, and the x-ray technician who came out to snap some glamor shots of her.

She’s got a totally bizarre and perplexing problem residing in her… (are you ready for this… go ahead and take a wild guess…) ass.

To make a long story short, (Yes.  I am aware nobody thinks I can do this. *sigh* Now I am going to have to prove myself…) She broke her hip a couple of years ago and while she was still in the hospital recovering from the hip surgery, they called me and said it was dislocated.  Doc said her muscles “contracted” and pulled her leg out of socket.  She would need surgery again to fix it cause it would just pull out again if he manipulated it back in.  Strangely enough, the old woman that makes the princess and the pea gal look insensitive wasn’t in any pain so she elected not to have the surgery.  I believe it was one of her cuter moments, she looked at me when I explained her options and said, “I don’t want to have surgery again, Krissa.  I’m old, already!”.  She was 84 and I didn’t argue with her.  So all this time she’s had a dislocated hip.  Or, actually, I don’t know why it’s called that because really her femur is dislocated from her hip.  Well, all of the sudden her leg bone has started… migrating around in her, butt.  Her hip is all wonky crooked seeming and the head of the femur is poking out in the thickest part of her gluteus maximus.  This makes it very painful to sit on for any length of time.  Her butt is bruised from the inside.

At this point I would like to point out that this was promised to be a short story not a normal one.

Anyway, the P.A. and I sat there by her bed poking around and talking about what’s up with her bones and placing bets on what the x-ray will show and what we think the different odd bits poking out here and there are going to turn out to be.

I do know one thing.  I see an operation in her future.  Before long that bone is going to start a bedsore that I won’t be able to cure because anytime she is sitting or lying on her back she is pressing against it.  Constant pressure.

John called while I was in there talking to the P.A. and asked what I was doing.  I said, “Looking at your mom’s ass with Darnell.  Do you want me to tell you about it?”  “No!  I gotta go, they’re paging me.”

The pansy-ass.

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 between us.

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.

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.

Greetings all!  You may, (or, may not), have noticed that I have a new site in the old blog roll.  A Piece of My Mind is a site inhabited by Maria, an uber cool environmental conservationist  I “met” on Plurk a while back.  It really is inspiring to read about her own exploits in the area of trying new things and new ideas about all areas of conservation.

Have any of you ladies ever heard of a Diva Cup?  Maria discusses the use of one and the benefits of it.  Well, that little gizmo may just be the best thing since sliced bread.  Here is her first post on the “non-absorbent menstrual cup”.  The Diva Cup is also environmentally friendly because it is reusable and not disposable.  Read about it and tell me what you think.  If I had any need for it whatsoever I would have one ordered right now.  I had a thermal ablation several years ago and am done with periods.  (Yet, I still have ovaries, uterus, tubes, all my bits and pieces, and there was NO cutting.  Quite possibly the best thing ever for people who don’t want any more children and have a healthy reproductive package. It was an outpatient procedure with minimal recovery time.)   I am going to show the info on the Diva Cup to Kes and Keelan and see if either one will consider it.  They are both on Depo Provera shots due to their intense dislike of periods, but neither one wants to continue since the injection of hormones into their little bodies causes weight gain and huger than normal boobs.  I am thinking this new cup method may be the way to go.

Now, watch out for whiplash while I attempt to segue into another conservation area.  Just a very slight change in subject…

My hot water heater is at one end of my house and my dishwasher at the other.  (Still with me?)  I use it only when it is full and don’t use the “pot scrubber” cycle, just the “regular” one or the “light”.  The dishwasher repair guy said to cut down on the electric bill make sure the hot water is flowing in the kitchen sink before turning on the dishwasher so it doesn’t have to use so much electricity to heat the water to the proper temp before filling.  HOWEVER, I have to run water through my tap for a good couple of minutes to get the hot water to that end of the house.  My environmental question is this: In this case is it better to save electricity or water?

I gotta go over to Maria’s site and alert her to my concerns and see what she thinks…

Hello everyone!  This is Cam, Krissa’s much, much younger brother.  I am INVADING Halfasstic.com to announce that I have finally gotten around to updating it to the current version of WordPress AND finally installed Akismet (a comment spam blocker).  So now Krissa should be able to manage her comments much easier than before.

Before I go, however, I’d like to leave you with a few gems I came across when I was recently back at our mom and dad’s.  Call it revenge for the pictures Krissa posted of me back in July for my birthday.

Enjoy, and please comment!

(to view in their full-sized glory, click on them!)

Hi all!

The other day, Monday in fact, John and I spent the better part of the day on a not so fun project.  For a while now every time I opened the flatware drawer there seemed to be a fine coating of flour or powdered sugar or Bisquick, something of that nature, on the utensils.  I just thought one of the girls spilled some in there and not much more of it.  After several times, though, I became suspicious.  I reached inside the drawer and wiped my fingers along the underside of the counter top.  Upon the removal of my hand I promptly threw up.   No, not really, but I wanted to.  White, powdery mold.  I grabbed a flashlight and looked in at the backs of the cabinets.  Nothing.  No water stains or mold or even cobwebs.  Very clean.  HOWEVER, when I shined my light up at the underside of the Formica it was all covered in the white mold.  So when John got home and after a little inter net research we went out and got some bleach a spray bottle and some sponges.  We removed the drawers and all of the contents of the cabinets before I spent about 5 minutes on my hands and knees with my head stuck in the cabinets spraying that bleach all over the underneath of the counter top.  Man!  That stuff burns the eyes!  We waited a while and repeated the process.  Or, I should say I repeated the process!  John has “bad knees” that bother him every time there is the need to crawl around on the tile floor.  Whatever.

The neat thing is that the mold had disappeared immediately after I sprayed the first time.  I mean not a trace of it anywhere.  Poof!  Disappeared in a cloud of… well, not mold.  Has anything like this happened to anyone else.  There was no moisture under there and never had been, and it was only on that side of the sink, not the other side.  Weird.

Well, here it is, Saturday and John’s vacation is almost over.  It has flown by and I’d like to say we got a lot done.  No.  We really didn’t, but we relaxed and did the things that HAD to be done.  The rest of the time we just chilled out and all was good.

Today we went to see Batman and really enjoyed it.  It actually had a good story line and people were dying  that you didn’t think were going to.  Not just this lame, totally predictable movie that you would expect from a comic book hero.  Heath Ledger absolutely needs to be nominated for some big award.  His Joker was the best!  Very quirky and believable.   yeah, yeah, Christian Bale is kinda cute.  Maggie Gyllenhaal seemed to look a bit like a puppy dog throughout the movie.  Her face and eyes seemed drawn.  Poorly done makeup?  I dunno.

After the movie we proceeded to run some errands and made our way to CVS pharmacy to return some diapers that John had picked up the other day that were the wrong kind.  We came in and lo and behold!  There to our left on the floor right in front of the other door was a condom.  Apparently someone had worn it around in the parking lot stuck to their shoe as it was used and quite dirty to boot.  Being the ever resourceful soul that I am, I whipped out my new Chocolate phone and fooled with the buttons and vastly confusing dials for 30 minutes before figuring out how to take a snapshot.  John was off to find a manager and tell the guy to wear a rubber glove and eventually I overcame my possessed phone and managed to take a picture worthy of a professional.  OK, maybe not.

I can only imagine what Google searches are going to lead here now…

Henrietta has been completely consumed with the death of legendary doctor, Michael DeBakey.  She has launched into gushing praise of him, in apparently mid thought, a number of times and caught me completely off guard.

While putting her to bed last night…

H: He was 99 years old!  And he did SO MUCH for Houston!

Me: …Who?

H: 99!

Me: WHO?- (I was unaware this was going to be an ongoing thing at this point.)

H: Yes!  He was!

Me: HENRIETTA, WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

H: Oooh, Dr. DeBakey!

This happened over and over with her out of the blue announcing things like, “Did you know he’s a Catholic?!”.

Just a few minutes ago I looked in the living room and she was sitting there watching the news, bawling.  I just left it and later she started going on about how “sad it is that he died…” I finally told her that was crazy and he was a 99 year old man living in a broken down little old 99 year old body and he had done enough for the world to warrant an excuse to leave and go on to better things.  Her response?

“Ooooh, (sob), Yeeeeees!”

To be such a devout Catholic, she has consistently missed the entire message about death and heaven and rewards in the afterlife, all that.  This has happened over and over with other people who have died and her attitude is always that it must be the worst thing ever.  I really don’t think she believes in heaven.  And like I said, she is a super-duper Catholic, not just your run-or-the-mill kind.  Weird.