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The other day, (Easter, to be exact), I was doing laundry and went in my bedroom to hang some things up.  I walked in and was going to my closet when I heard all this commotion in the bathtub.

Pleeeeeeease get me out, Mom!

I don’t know what made her go in there and think that jumping in the tub was the thing to do, but she could NOT get out.  The tub is a bit sunken on the inside and with no rug for traction, she was good and stuck.  Desperate and pitiful whining like you can’t even imagine.  The little fat ass.

Kes, will YOU get me out?!

However, this did not prevent me from leaving her there long enough to go get Kessa and let her come in and we both took pictures of her cause that’s the kinds of bee-otches we are.

I just wait... SOMEBODY will get me out!

What on earth do you think she was thinking to hop in there all by herself?  If there had been even a crumb of food, I would have expected it… but no.

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Last night overheard in my house:

Squealing and laughter along with some yelling and aggravation. “MOM!  Make Kessa give me back my M&M’s!”

And without missing a beat these words came out of my mouth: “Kes, give your sister back her M&M’s before I spank you.”

And the most surreal part?

It worked.

The other night we went to Pizza Hut for, you guessed it, PIZZA.  So I am sitting in the car because I looked like hell and was in a white tee shirt with no bra and shoeless.  The homeless look is alive and well at chez Lopez.  Anyway, John went in to get the pizza after a quick glance at me determined there was no way I was going to do it, and I noticed this poster in the window.  Click it and notice it says that they have “Restaurant Quality Pasta”.

As opposed to…what?  I mean I know Pizza Hut is not a 5 star establishment, but it’s not a hot dog cart either.

Just wondering…?

Next, we have a close up of John’s shirt with the little guy on the horse attempting to whack the invisible ball with a mallet.  Only John managed to get a little something Chinese food wise on it at lunch and the horse in his particular version has, obviously, left a pile of poo behind.

What can I say… this amused me.

Remember this?  Lisa’s kitchen and living room, ages ago when the remodel began?  Well, here we have some update photos.  Everything is just about done completely.  She doesn’t have her art and pictures up on the walls yet in these shots, but I’m thinking maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll get over there and we’ll do it.  She also has some wooden shutters ordered to go up on the windows.

There is a beautiful oil painting that we found at a frame shop the other day to go over her fireplace.  It will look totally different.

There’s not much else to say.  John is off work again tomorrow.  AGAIN.  TWO TIMES THIS WEEK.  Those people at his work who can’t seem to do without him may start to think he is having an affair… with his wife.

Oh well.

Hello people!  Long time since I’ve been here, I know.

Disclaimer: This is being written entirely under duress and NOT because I have anything that is exceptionally exciting to say.  OK, not really exciting at all.

Yes, let’s just say I am being coerced by my family and a few other people.  Boy are they going to feel foolish when they read this and realize that they made me do it.  Alright, let the magic words continue…

First up, (I think this is all you’re getting), for your fascination is the fact that I cleaned my closet out the other day.

Here we have the two bags of clothes to donate.  They weighed a million pounds.

Here we are AFTER the sorting.  What you can’t see is that between the frumpy, ugly clothes is SPACE.  WOO-HOO!

Now the really neat thing that I really enjoy about my closet is that the clothes are hung in color waves.  OK, I’m not sure if that is the right term, but they are stuck in there by color.  Kinda sorta following rainbow theory… OK, not very well.  I’m pretty sure my “spectrum” is all outta whack, BUT, if it was in the right order, you’d be awed.  NO, REALLY!  YOU WOULD!

From the other direction!  I think you can see what I mean a little bit better here.

And the pants!  That’s work clothes on the end down there.

There is a whole other bag of clothes that was just trash that NOBODY would want.  Torn, paint spattered, bleach riddled, work rags.  What I’m thinking now is, I really can’t do any hard work at this point because, I have nothing to wear.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.  I couldn’t lie to you people.  Well, not about the ability of me to wear housework clothes, anyway…  I did save a couple of pairs of pants and some old tee shirts for just such an occasion as cleaning out my tub and shower walls.  AND I DID IT!  LOTS of bleach was used and MUCH inhaling of fumes ensued.  Voila!  It all sparkles now.  That man I am married to even noticed… how sad a commentary is that on the filth that was hanging out in there?

We here at chez Lopez do not condone the growth of single cell organisms in our bathing facilities.  Nor do we approve of them flourishing to the extent that they develop their own IQ.

Yes, well…  Once this has occurred, “we”, ahem, (You know who that is, right?), sit back, shake our head and watch that shit grow take appropriate action.  Before too many months days go by I haul myself in there with a bottle of some sort of bleach/cleaner, a piece of Scotch Brite, a rag, and an old toothbrush.  Completely sans the gas mask.  (I am VERY foolish brave!)  Three wine coolers later hours later, I emerged victorious.

Next, we, (I use that term loosely), re grout, cause that stuff is coming lose from all the mold/bleach going on in there!

Here is the one I just KNOW you’ve been waiting for.

With excitement riding high I am presenting the top of my closet.  The white boxes are empty and there for gift giving.  The blue boxes are full of who knows what and the gray boxes are archival quality, acid free stuff to preserve things in.  I’ve got a few different copies of The Dallas Morning News in there from the day of and the following few days after Kennedy was assassinated.  My mom or father got them and kept them. The newspapers in the acid ridden plastic bag next to it are ones that I have some stuff published in from back when The Houston Post was around.

No, I did not have anything to do with them going out of business… NO, I don’t know why they went out of business.  SHEESH

I guess the fact that those are in the plastic bag, turning brown and rotting is pretty evident of how I feel about my worth as a writer!  Still… they DID publish my opinion… hummmmm.

NO, IT WASN’T ABOUT CLEANING OUT MY CLOSET.

It’s 4:45 AM and I can’t go back to sleep.  John left for work earlier than usual today since he’s got a doctor’s appointment at 9:00.

John.  Who would let a limb rot off his body before he would voluntarily go to the doctor has decided to go in and “check this thing out”.

John is a large man.  He stands a bit over six feet tall and is quite broad shouldered and big statured.  He was over weight at 250 lbs.  But in the past, oh, 3 1/2 months he’s lost about 60 lbs.

We don’t know why.

He hasn’t been “dieting” at all.  We eat healthy for the most part here at chez Lopez, but he has always just packed away the food.  Let’s call it a “healthy” appetite, though I suppose that’s not entirely accurate.  Anyway, best case scenario, he has miraculously had the metabolism of a teenager restored to him and everyone I know will hate him for it (and I will be a tad bitter myself).

Actually what I’m thinking has happened is he has developed a case of diabetes.  He is urinating a bit more frequently and that, along with the weight loss makes me think that may be the case.  Compared to all the other possible scenarios I can think of, this is something we can live with. He can get outfitted with whatever he needs today and I have no problems with jabbing him with a needle.

This is one of those times when I would dearly love to have some idea about his ancestors.  Heredity would be so nice to know about, but he was adopted as a baby and we don’t really have any clue about his people.  I don’t even think he’s Hispanic, at least not all.  The girls keep telling him he’s an alien. Good guess.

Anyway, I’m not going to be able to sleep until he calls me and tells me that the doc has done a blood test and he’s just diabetic.  At least that’s what I’m hoping happens.

Remember this, yesterday-when I managed to lose my mind phone and was lamenting how I had searched high and low, never finding it?  Well, guess who commented and then sent me subsequent emails telling me where to look to find it?

Witchypoo over at Psychicgeek.

She told me to, “Look within, or under, an unmade bed.”  So I responded by saying something to the effect that I was shocked that she thought I would have unmade beds.  She pointed out that I have teenagers and that, of course, means unmade beds.   *sigh* She is right.

At this point I still wasn’t thinking about the psychic thing.  I was still just, “Oh she must have found something she lost in the bed and that really is a good place to look…”

So we emailed back and forth several times and she finally just kicked me in the butt told me that the “coverlet is turned back and the phone is right under the edge of it, close to the pillow”.

So I got my happy ass up and went first into H’s room and patted around on her bed and wasn’t really even thinking about the fact that she had given me a “seeing” tip.  Oh, and Henrietta was IN the bed when I was looking around, so OF COURSE IT WAS UNMADE… I mean I am not a complete slob, so I am sure it would  have been made if she hadn’t been in it.

OK, THAT’S THE STORY I’M GOING WITH.

At the foot of her bed is a coverlet/large throw thing that we always keep there for her in case she gets cold.  It is folded in half across the end of the bed.  I patted the thing down and, well, there it was.  Right there, just a few inches in, right at the edge.  So I immediately picked it up and went back in to re-read her last email.   It said it was “close to the pillow.”  Well, the coverlet was over the end of the bed not close to the head.  But look!  You can see in this picture that there is a stack of pillows in the seat of the chair that is pushed up to the end of the bed.

Now, granted I put the phone back in the bed to take the picture, but that is almost exactly where it was, but the coverlet was pulled over it of course and I couldn’t see it.  (I’m not that lame.  I would have already found it if it had been lying out on the bed!  OH, YES, I WOULD!)  Anyway, see the stack of pillows in the chair that I still haven’t found anything to do with since she got the *&%$#! hospital bed?  They are about two feet from the phone.

So I would say that is pretty dead on accurate. I was amazed.  That was one of the neatest things to happen to me in a long time.  And not just because being without the extra phone was such a hassle.  It was just super neat.

That Witchypoo is amazing AND FABULOUS!  Yes, I said FABULOUS!

Amended to add that I forgot to point out that the coverlet is always folded in half, “turned back” as it was indicated.  And while it is kinda messy in the pic it is turned back on itself…  Completely in half.

First off at Chez Lopez, the freakin phone is missing.  This irritates me no end as I have to carry the remaining downstairs phone around with me everywhere I go or sprint from one end of the house to the other when the damn thing rings because I will, inevitably, be where it’s not.  It doesn’t make much difference if I’m not expecting a phone call.  They can just leave a message or not.  But when I am waiting for the nurse to call me back or one of the kids to call or some such thing, it is damn inconvenient.

Have you seen this phone, except with “Handset 1″ on the screen?  I will pay you to tell me where it is.  No, that’s not like a ransom… that would be desperate, and hey, I’m not desperate.  Not at all.  NOW WHERE IS IT!

The last time it was missing I found it in the window sill in the bathroom.  Yeah.  In answer to your question, oh obvious one, I don’t know.  Since I refuse to take it in with me to potty I am assuming it was hanging on my waistband when I went to empty H’s pee can, but who can really be sure?  Not me.

This is where it was before and now it’s not and yes I looked inside that candle thing.  It’s not there.  I have also looked all the other places.

Oh, by now you realize how serious this is to me and are thinking, “Gee, Krissa, why not just page it from the base?”  Well aren’t you brilliant?  (Ooo.  Did that sound snarky?  I’m a touch irritable today, bare with me.)  I will tell you why.  The ringer is turned off.  This is a gift(?) from my husband who hates the phones ringing and turns off the ringers when he comes home from work because the kids are the only ones getting calls on them by that time anyway.  They answer them upstairs.  This is the second day it’s been missing, so it will be dead soon anyway.

So I am awaiting that info on the phone location and will take anonymous tips if you are too scared to tell me you took it.

You should be.

Moving right along.

Remember this?  Well, it turns out that the $10.00 wine cooler/chiller (whatever!) was missing a little pin in the top of the door to hold it on the hinge.  No biggie, right?  So John and I hunted around at the local hardware store for something that would work and we picked up a little 49 cent deal that looked like it would work and, indeed, it fit fine.  However it would shimmy up, out of the hole a bit every time the door was opened and closed.  So I went online to Emersonradio.com, got the phone number and called.  The guy made no promises but told me that they had some replacement parts in the warehouse to send out, but the things are made in China and he kind of doubted that the door hinge pin was one of the things that were kept over here.  In the good ol’ US.  So he was going to put in a request and if they had it they would send it to me.

I never expected to hear from them again.

Well, yesterday Fedex dropped this on my doorstep.

I mean, can you see why I had no idea what it could be?  It is, quite literally, the size of my toaster oven.

Filled to the top with the huge-bubble bubble wrap.  (The kind that is REALLY fun to pop and scare the dogs with!)  And nothing else.

At least that’s what I thought at first.  And then on closer inspection, MUCH closer, I finally found a teeny-tiny pin for the door hinge.

Here it is.  In place and holding the door perfectly.

$10.00 for wine cooler.

Free shipping on the free pin for the door.

About $12.00 for the two bottles of cheapish wine we got on sale inside it.

This is where I’m supposed to say something is “Priceless”, but, really?  Who am I kidding?

Every night about 9:30 to 10:00, I notice that the dogs are milling about looking at me expectantly.  Standing in front of the door way into the utility room, staring at me. Intensely.   If I am in my bedroom they stand in the doorway out in the hall and look at me.  When I walk toward them they take off running toward the utility room and stop and look back to make sure I am indeed coming and not going into any other areas of the house.  The simple question, “You ready for bed?” garners much excitement.

Kissy is staring at the utility room HARD.  Her telepathic messages were beginning to give me a headache.

Baby is just doing the pouty thing that says, “Hey, you really do need to snap to and carry out your duties, but I’m still on your side.”.

Maybe if we both stare at it at the same time…WHILE looking pathetic…

That’s all they want.  For me to put them to bed.

The door to the utility room stays open.  All the time.  All they need to do is walk in there and get in bed.  The spoiled brat little freaks little dears are just waiting for me to cover them up, pet them, tell them good night, and turn out the light before shutting the door.

Baby is even smiling for her photo op, she’s so happy to be in bed.

I SWEAR I DON’T WORK THEM ALL DAY, DEPRIVING THEM OF REST, THEY’RE JUST WEIRD!

The freakin’ give away was SUPPOSED to be yesterday and I forgot!  So here it is, today.  I did the random number generator thing as I said I was going to and our winning number is 5.  When numbered in order, the unconscious mutterings number 1-12 and number 5 is… (drum roll please)… Sabrina!

So, dear, please send me your info and I will get them sent right out to you when I head to the post office here sometime in the next 6 months.

I really will try to get them straight out.  Soon. ish.

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Henrietta is doing better today.

Oh, I don’t think I ever let on what was going on with her.  Well, she was going a bit… bat shit crazy and we couldn’t figure out why.  I left strict instructions that they were not to, under ANY circumstances, run any bizarre tests on her or give her any extra, (different) meds without contacting me for approval first.

They didn’t.  She has just been getting the same old Levaquin IV antibiotic that she always gets and she has been hallucinating all kinds of totally off the wall stuff.  In true Henrietta fashion it is all very dark, negative, and pessimistic.

We finally decided the antibiotic must be doing it and the nurses were tired of reassuring her that there were no “large black men” going in her room through her window at night scaring her.  Did not matter how many times I explained she was on the forth floor and no one could get to it, she insisted that men were sitting their chair up against her window outside.  Children were looking in at her and she kept telling me to look for myself the children were looking in right then and I could see them too if I tried.  Last night she told John and I, with tears in her eyes, that the nurse had told her that she has multiple sclerosis and is going to die from it.

I am sure that what happened was the nurse mentioned something about her scoliosis and she, (being THE most negative person in the world), mixed it up to be multiple sclerosis.  Given opportunity, she would have incorporated Lyme disease in there somehow.  But, no.  I had to nix everything and tell her the truth.  I am such a joy kill morose mood destroyer.

Yup.  Just call me MMD.

Well, they took her off the Levaquin and started her on something else yesterday and she seems fine today.  Woo-Hoo!

John and I have been invited to another murder mystery party.  Last year it was held on New Year’s Eve and the theme was the old west.  I have forgotten what my name was, Adella something, but I was a widow and John was a sheriff or some such law man.  We had quite elaborate costumes and most of the people there did, too.  It was loads of fun.

This year they are having it on the 31st and the theme is ancient Rome.  We received an invitation that had two copies of the same cast of characters in it and on each list there was one name that was highlighted.  One of the characters was a Roman Senator and the other was a Vestal Virgin.  So I kinda took things into my own hands and told John I was going to be the senator and he was going to be a vestal virgin.  I had to explain how funny this was going to be a few times before I got him on board with the whole plan.  After all they didn’t assign us the rolls they just indicated that these were the two that we were supposed to play.

Mither and I went out and bought John some false eyelashes and found an old costume for him to wear and fashioned a veil from some pink organza and a laurel of silk roses.   He already has some leather flip flops that he can wear and I will wrap pink ribbon up his legs to look like Roman sandals.

He will be a real head turner.  I have to stop making remarks about his “virginity”.  He seems quite sensitive about this.  He said something like, “Gosh, it’s been a long time since I was a virgin… at least 5 years…”

I told him that the Romans didn’t wear anything under their toga’s but I really think it would be a good idea if he did cause we wouldn’t want anyone to think he was “easy” or anything since he IS playing the part of a virgin.

My costume is fairly elaborate in that it is about a million miles of white cotton fabric trimmed in purple rope gimp.  We worked long and hard on how to… toga it.  I kinda hate to think about cutting it down smaller since it was originally a valance in my dining room and may have a future as such again.

I have some other fancy stuff to my get-up, but I will take pictures and show you after the party.  I am looking forward to it and John said that there is NO WAY I will be allowed to post a picture of him dressed as a woman.  I will just tell him to put his veil down and no one will see his face.  Heh.

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!