HalfAsstic.com

Hi gang!  When my brother was a little tyke we’d ask him, “What cha doin’, Cam?”  His pat answer was, “Busy doing stuff!”  Well, that’s kinda me lately.  Hard to put a handle on it and say it was mostly one thing or the other.

Speaking of my brother, look at my masthead.  He Christmatized it!  The bag of coal is to be expected… he is, after all, my bratty, baby brother.

John is only off one day this week and he’s already had it.  We had a good time and even went to see another movie!  I have seen more movies this year than I have seen in the past 10.  Why?  I don’t even know.  And I don’t really care, I’m liking the trend.

We saw Four Christmas’s and it was really funny.  I used to really just not like Vince Vaughn, but he’s grown on me and I thought he and Reese Witherspoon were both very funny in this.

John and I rode around running errands listening to a Simon and Garfunkel CD and then moved on to John Fogerty.

We stopped at one place so I could buy a new curling iron and when we got home I was throwing away the packaging when I happened to notice the… directions.  Yes, curling irons need directions.  I know.  I was a bit amazed by this, but that’s nothing when you actually consider what they say.

Did you know that, among other things, you are not supposed to bathe while curling your hair?  NO!  Really!  You’re not!  Shocking, I know.  (heh heh…shocking…)

Also, apparently you are not to ever, under any circumstances, consider using this appliance while sleeping.  Ever.

It is very specific when it says that the iron is hot when in use and not to use it against your skin or eyes.

Ya think?

I know it is a lot to remember, but I plan to spend a good deal of my “free time” (BAHAHAHAHAH), studying this instruction booklet until I am certain that the next time I take the curling iron to bed with me I know exactly how to use it safely.

When we came home from all the errand running and movie going, John painted my toenails!  Does it get any better?  I think not.

Needless to say there were green beans for supper!  heh heh heh On the down side… I think I screwed up my nails… OH WELL.

The Boyfriend had some dental work done yesterday and Kes is over at his house today.  She’s basically out of school for the rest of the semester and enjoying the freedom.  Now if she can just get her pharmacy tech test taken and get a job as one all will be good with her.

Keelan has started forgetting to take her medicine and is showing the effects.  She is being a “Bee-otch Extraordinaire”.   When she is rude and snaps at me on the phone, my first reaction is to tell her to come straight home… only I don’t want her HERE.  Not under those circumstances!  I have been leaving her notes to take the stupid pill and she was doing it, but, all of the sudden the notes aren’t enough to do it.  The notes were necessary in the first place because it got her all cranky for me to tell her to take it, verbally.  (Teenager)  So now we are just moving on to me showing up with the pill in hand and saying something to the effect of, “Here, take this damn thing before I kill you.”  You’d think this would be effective… Sometimes it is.

Henrietta is doing OK, this morning she asked me, “Krissa, do you think (SIL) has my big booty?”

You could have heard paint dry.  “What?”

“You know… my big bootie, I crocheted…”

It’s dawning on me at this point… “The big Christmas stocking?”

“YEEEEES!”

OK, so this is somehow comforting to me.  The “big booty” is indeed a croched stocking and not the emaciated, wrinkled up arse of Henrietta.

And to answer the original question. No, SIL has no idea where H’s “big booty” is.

But I know where mine is.

Hello gang!

I would like to report that on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, my SIL called me and said that she had gotten the ham she had agreed to bring and it was a nice big spiral cut.  She made a point of saying that it was already cooked and mentioned it a couple of times.  Ok, great.  I’ve gotten spiral cut hams before and yes, that’s the way they come.  Cooked.

I guess I wasn’t too worried since I was doing a huge turkey and I was sure there was going to be enough for everyone.

The following morning, Thanksgiving Day, she called to say that she was going to bring it over to my house to heat up.  OK, fine.  She then told me that she was going over to her ex-husbands house for a meal at noon with her kids since we were going to eat in the evening when John got home.  I told her to be sure and bring a pan to heat the ham in since all my sheet cake pans were being used for cakes and casseroles and what not.  She said she’d buy one and I told her not to bother, I’d wash it, just use a pan from her house.  She told me that she doesn’t own a sheet cake pan, or any other pan other than a skillet and pot.

She is 55 years old.  How can this be?

It gets better.  I asked her what time she was coming over and she indicated not until shortly before we were going to eat.  I told her the ham would have to heat for longer than that and asked her to read the directions on it.  She insisted that the ham only needed about 20 minutes to heat and went over to it and told me it was 10 lbs, would only require about 20 minutes to heat.

I said “Millie, read the directions to me.”

Millie: deep sigh, “Heat for 15 minutes per pound…  hum…”

“That’s two and a half hours, Millie.”

She said she’d take care of it and I assumed she was going to heat it at her ex-husband’s house, at least partially.  No.  She showed up with a cold ham and we hacked off a bunch of slices, put them in the microwave with a little bit of water and heated them up.  It worked out fine, but, man! how could anyone grow to be 55 years old and know so little about something so simple?

And the question of the day is, what made her so sure it only took 20 minutes to heat the ten pound ham?

Well, I am pulling out all the stops.  I have, in fact, NOT been memed.  I am stealing it anyway.  Dear Ree over at Hotfessional did a meme today that I NEED to do just to have something to say.  While she did not meme me, she did not meme anybody.  She’s spreading the love anyway, cause I’m taking it.

It’s a random thoughts Meme and she got it from Marylin at A Little Space For Me.

So here goes!

• Word for the week in my head…

Emotion.  Keelan is being so emotional and, consequently, making everyone else emotional. There’s no escaping it.

• Thoughts for the week in my head…

I hope, for all our sakes, that this medication works or one of us will surely die.

• Thing for the week in my life…

Henrietta wants to wear bras now and I’ve got to go out somewhere, sometime and find her some.  32 A bras.  Not because she is worried about anything sagging, her boobs are now getting irritated by the tops of her diapers.  No.  I know what you’re thinking.  Her A cup boobs are not hanging that far.  Her spine has deteriorated so far that her torso is the length of a four year old’s.  Literally.

• Song for the week in my head… For days now Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad by Meatloaf has been in my head and I CAN NOT make it stop!

• Food for the week in my belly…

Chicken and dumplings.  Made a huge pot of it tonight and it is soooo good.  I will have to give up my recipe here soon.

• Color for the week in my life…

No idea.  What the hell does that mean?

• Smile for the week on my face…

John doesn’t have to drive to and from Pearland everyday!  Hooray!

• Blessing for the week in my heart…

That John is driving to and from work here close by and has work to drive to, period.

Free toes everybody!

Well, the SIL showed up today.  She hasn’t been here to visit H in a few weeks.  In her defense, (and it doesn’t happen often that I say anything in her defense…), she is without a car right now.  Of course that doesn’t stop her from timing her visit to coincide with my finishing up getting H off the pot and cleaned up.  Somehow she is never here in time to do the potty for HER mother.  It happens at almost the exact same time everyday, and she knows this.  Well, at least she dressed her and drug her into the wheelchair.

I am now hiding in the bedroom and giving her the opportunity to spend some time with her.

Just went in there for coffee and SIL is watching a sappy movie on Lifetime and H is reading the newspaper.  Oh well.  So much for communication.

I think I will go and fetch the broom, and mop stuff and clean the floor in my bathroom as I washed all the bathmats yesterday and I HATE putting them down on the disgusting, hairy, powdery, floor.

Did that, just waiting for the shine stuff to dry and then the rugs go down.

Gee, I can’t believe I have sunk to the point that I am offering blow by blow action on the housecleaning.

SIL left after staying about an hour and 45 minutes.  I guess that’s all she felt she was capable of today.

John is at work having MORE company and a Holiday Open House today.  So I haven’t really heard anything from him.  Oh!  He did let me know yesterday that his boss convinced the bigger boss that he can’t live without him and not to move him.  That’s great, as she would have put him in a far away store in Pearland with a unit director that runs it who has been requesting him.  Loooong commute.

And the thing that tops off everything in this gripping tale that I know you aren’t the least bit sorry you tuned into:

Today I sewed a button on my pants, (are you ready for this?), WHILE I WAS WEARING THEM.

Damn, my days are something to just try to imagine….

Today’s the day I get my glasses!  John is off work, so I have a way to get there and we just have to wait until one of the girls is here to stay with Henrietta.  It’s going to be wonderful to have a pair to wear all the time, because I can’t tell you how tired I am of not having the readers where I am trying to read at the moment, they’re always in another room.  Or maybe it’s me that’s always in the other room, after all I am the one that’s given to roaming around the house, not them.

OK, it’s now 10:55 PM and I am home with the new glasses on.  They aren’t that confusing, but I am not sure they were…”done” right.  When something is right straight in front of me it is very clear, but when I have to look slightly off to one side, either way, it is blurry.  I don’t mean very far either.  It seems to be this way with the far away vision, the mid range and the reading, all.  If I am reading a magazine and there are three columns of print, while having my head positioned looking straight at the first column the one on the far right is so blurry I can’t read it well at all.  I have to move my head or the magazine.  Is this asking too much of a pair of glasses.  I’ve never noticed anyone reading a book having to move their head in order to read across the page.

I think they didn’t “do” the prescription all the way across.

Well, God knows I have debated about this, but here’s a damn picture:

Somehow, at this point in my life, the “smart chick” look doesn’t bother me at all.  Not sure I can pull it off once I open my mouth, but up until then, I think the glasses I picked out help with the illusion.

They told me to wear them for a week and see what I think.  I think I’m going to call them tomorrow and ask why I have to be laser-sighted on target and physically aimed at anything I want to see clearly.

Now, I have to find someone to do something about those chipmunk cheeks.

OH!  Before I end this, I have a confession!  No!  Nothing juicy!  No, what I did today was make it over to Lisa’s AGAIN two days in a row now and I was going to take pictures of her gutted kitchen.  We went and visited and left and I forgot to take the pictures.  Got my glasses and went home and then remembered I needed to take them so John and I went back over to Lisa’s house AGAIN.  Got over there and looked in my purse for my trusty(?) camera and I had left it at home.

I really do think God didn’t want me to take any pictures today, cause he obviously made me very forgetful for some reason.

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…

NaBloPoMo may be a HUGE mistake for me.  I am telling you that being forced to write every single day is making my blogs weak, people!

So far today, my good friend and recent birthday party and cake eating participant, Lisa, popped in for a minute and snagged a cute little antique oak breakfast table from my garage.  I have had it for a good while and wanted a round one to fit better into the little breakfast area alcove.  So when I got it, I stuck the square one in the garage where it is just taking up more space with tons of H’s crap.  I was happy to see it go and I hope it works out for her cause she is really sweet, but mostly because I DON’T WANT ANY MORE CRAP IN MY GARAGE AND I AM NOT TAKING IT BACK… *evil, maniacal laughter* Yes indeedy.  Her problem now.

Also, Rich, from across the street where the shindigs are almost always held, brought back over my little crock pot that we took there on Halloween when all the neighbors get together in his driveway and eat and drink and give out tons of candy.  We just turn out our porch lights and all collect there with bags of candy for one big bowl and then make sure the kids get several handfuls.  How’s that for a step saver?  It’s certainly more fun for the grownups.

He didn’t bring the lid to the crock pot back with it and I didn’t realize it until after he’d left.  Now, do I call him and ask if it’s over there and maybe he just didn’t realize that it went to the crock pot?  Go over and ask if her forgot to include it?  Wait for a ransom note?

Keelan is sitting here in front of me texting and it is annoying.

Speaking of annoying…

It is 74 degrees in this house and while I am comfortable with the ceiling fans on and the windows open, H is cloistered in her room and insisted on wearing a three quarter length sleeved shirt today.  She has the light sheen of perspiration on her brow and upper lip.  She is steadfast in her resolve.  This IS November and she WILL dress accordingly.  I don’t get it.  She has lived here, in the armpit of Texas, her whole life and she knows how hot it stays year round.  She’s a strange old bird.

And the really big news is that on Friday John was off work and we went out to eat at the Chinese restaurant we always go to in Friendswood.  We took Keelan with us, as H was here with the caregiver provider person.  Kessa called while we were there and she was close by so she joined us.  That was the first time in years that we have all gone out to eat together.  Usually one of the girls is stuck here with H or one of them is at school or work or some such thing.  It was fun and it makes me determined to do it again soon.

This is really sad and pathetic and I’m sorry, but sooner or later you’ll learn from your my mistake and stop coming back…

Hey, it’s only 3:30 now.  Maybe something else will happen!

OK!  Developments!  It is now 5:00 pm and older child’s boyfriend brought the lawn mower back he had borrowed and mowed the front yard and did the blower thing.

Henrietta just got through coming into the living room for the first time today.  Don’t know why she is being so anti-social lately.

This is getting a bit painful.  Not for me.  YOU.

That’s all I got people.

.

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.

Apparently there are some of you who are impressed by the fact that my rambling… goes off in so many directions.  You know, I go on about such differing stuff in the same post.

Are you sure this is a good thing and not just a sign of, well, at the best, disorganization, and at the worst, dementia?

I have to admit that I feel like it just comes from being really, really disorganized.  Not so much around here, but in my leetle head.  You should see me write.  Or rather I should see YOU.  I am intensely curious.

With me there is usually a lot of cutting and pasting and deleting and rewording.  It seems like not much flows that doesn’t get a major overhaul before it’s done.  Oh, and I never title it until it’s finished because it’s so strange by the time it gets done the original title never really fits anymore.

Is it like that for you?  I mean whether or not you blog, cause I have a few readers that I don’t think do it, but I could be wrong and they just don’t want me to find them.  Yeah.  That’s probably it.

Well I have just reread that and decided that I won’t go back and fix anything except spelling mistakes.  And believe me when I tell you that if I didn’t check for that you could come away not knowing that I said anything at all.

So please let me hear from you and tell me how do you do it?  And no.  This is not a cop-out on a post.  I really am curious.

Well, the good news is… I’m not dead.  I have just been on hiatus, hanging out with Mither and Pop.  They are down visiting and we are having a grand time.  We don’t have any big projects planned for this trip and so it has all been fairly relaxing.

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.