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NaBloPoMo is really applying the pressure now.  Yup.  Only five days in and already I am seizing up… word wise.

I don’t have much of anything…  I went running around with Lisa, of birthday fame, (several posts ago), and she bought a few new things to wear.  All I found that I both liked and could afford was a tube of mascara.  Good news, it’s a perfect fit!

I got one load of laundry done.  Whites.  Actually, that’s a lie.  I’ve only washed them and they’re still in the washer…

The vet went out to see Dandy and Alcape and basically he just wormed the horses, gave Keelan a list of crap she needs to go and pick up and apply to Dandy’s leg wound, and then charged her $230.00 and left.

Why didn’t I marry a vet?  Because John is so cute?  Yup.

H. was a bit irritated that I ran out on her as soon as she was done pooping.  It was obvious when I got home and she asked if she had gotten her church bulletin in the mail yet.  I told her no, I’d go get the mail and see if it came today. (The bank of mailboxes is down just a little past the corner. I live right beside the house on the corner.)  It was dark outside.  She said, “OOOOOH NO, KRISSA!  You need to stay put!”

Of course I immediately left and got the mail.  She didn’t get the bullitin and she probably thinks I hid it from her.

Oh!  I also finished The Host this morning.  After the Twilight series I picked it up and man, is it different!  Nothing like the series.  If it wasn’t written on the spine, I would never think it had the same author.  It was good, though.

Uuuuuuuuuh.  Can’t think of another damn thing……

Well, the damn horses are causing all kinds of problems for us.  Dandy, the mare, yes, I said a horse named Dandy is a mare, (grown female horse for all of you unfamiliar with horse jargon), has a bad cut on the back of her ankle again.  She and the little whipper-snapper, Alcape, (Also another female, although a colt…also known as a filly), are both, according to the test results, wormy.  Not the end of the world, but the stupid vet should have called us weeks ago and told us and they didn’t call so I thought the test results were negative.  I mean that’s what the people doctors do.  Anyway I asked them to mail the negative test results to the barn where the horses are kept and apparently they never did.  I guess it’s a good thing since the results were positive for worms.  So now we are having the vet go out to look at Dandy’s leg and worm both of them tomorrow afternoon.  Like we’ve got the money for that!  Younger daughter does, for sure, not make enough money to support her horse habit.  She is putting everything she comes home with toward feed, board, and vet bills.  She is now agreeable to the idea of selling them.

We are aaaaallllll over this.

So when I signal for H to stop talking to me because I am on the phone and she keeps talking to me by asking, “Who are you talking to?”  And I reply, “I’m talking to a man about a horse.”.  It’s not a euphemism.

Now I gotta go and see who is winning this other horse race that’s on every single non-cable channel on TV.

I know what I need to order for Christmas…

And IT’S A PILLOW!  How perfect is that?!

As you may have already considered, I don’t’ “get out” much.  I mean I don’t want to sound whiny, I do leave the house at least twice a week and sometimes more, (sometimes less).  But shopping for Christmas is always a real challenge.  I lurves me some catalogs!  This particular one is called Potpourri.  This particular item is on page 28.   Isn’t it adorable?  I bet you know several people who would love it.  Oh, it’s item #R86-065.

Anyway, I just wanted to share, plus, I may be short on posts this month due to the effort to post EVERY SINGLE DAY, so when I find something I think is neato, you may be subjected to it.

Yeah.  That would be my disclaimer.

More later?  Only if it’s mentionable.

Well, a day late and a…

It’s November and it’s National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo, as everyone is calling it.  I should have mentioned this yesterday on November 1st, but, hey, I’m just unorthodox, non conformist, a freak like that.  So the deal is that if you are going to take up the NaBloPoMo challenge you whip out a post every single day for the whole month.  I’m not sure I can come up with anything good to say, but jabber has always been one of my specialities.

I dunno, people.  John has had two days off in a row and went back to work today and of course the store is a hellhole.  (One of the reasons he hates to be off two days back to back.)  I think his boss really thinks he’s doing him a favor when he does this to his schedule.

I have been discussing the situation with Witchy-poo and she was of the opinion that they were possibly softening him up before sending him to the new, gi-normous, grand opening store.

I don’t think they’re concerned enough about how he feels to bother with softening him up.  This just sounds nothing like them.  His immediate boss is a fairly nice guy, though a bit incompetent.  But the higher up one is a tee-total bitch.  I believe, in my heart of hearts, she is very proud of this.

Kes just came home from work and dashed in to nab my credit card and run out and buy herself some new bras.  She was in worse shape than me, if that’s possible.  (Yes, it is.)  She had only one bra left and recently the underwire broke through and gouged into her boob leaving a nasty puncture wound.  I couldn’t believe it when she showed me the wire.  It was sharp as a needle!  A man must have designed it.

It’s 1:50 PM now and I’m just waiting for H to poo.  I believe I will do some laundry.

It is now 3:23 and H is pooed and dressed and in the wheel chair.  Except for feeding her, I am done for the day until time to put her to bed.  Unless there is the dreaded U.P. (For those of you so unfortunate you missed a particular explanatory post, this means “unscheduled poop”.  Try to keep up.  There may be a test.)

On October 25th, while my dear Mither and Pop were here, my good friend, Lisa had a birthday and we felt it very necessary to celebrate with great food and even better company.  Here is Lisa blowing out the candles that I lovingly placed on her birthday cake.

There was some discussion about the actual numerical amount represented by the flaming digits on the cake.

I was concerned that I may have gotten the number wrong because I wasn’t sure if the third candle is a one or a seven.  Lisa was, as usual a good sport about it and insists that when you hit 65,000 whats 600 years give or take?  I guess I can see her point.

You too can achieve this affect if you save every single numerical candle your kids have ever used on a cake.  And it could have been even longer if the cake was bigger!

I am going to call dear Mither and ask her for the recipe for this particular cake and be so generous as to give it to YOU!  It is, really, the very best cake in the world.  Lisa has had it before and she has told me many times that it’s her fav, too.  For a scratch cake it’s really very easy.

It’s supposed to be called Chocolate Sheet Cake, but, it’s known around here as BIRTHDAY CAKE.

BIRTHDAY CAKE

(CHOCOLATE)

2 c. sugar

2 c. flour

4 Tbsp. cocoa

1 stick butter

1 c. boil water

Add the following in this order and beat after each:

2 eggs

1/2 c. buttermilk

1 tsp. soda

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. salt

Bake in greased and floured 9×13 sheet cake  pan at 400 for 20ish minutes.  Frost as soon as it comes out of the oven.

FROSTING

Bring to a boil:

1 stick butter

4 Tbsp. cocoa

1/3 cup of milk

Add one box of confectioners sugar (2 cups), and 1 teaspoon vanilla.  Mix well.  One cup of nuts, (optional).

THAT is the most moist cake I have ever tasted… Moistest?  Moisty?  Moistester?

Whatev.

John was off work yesterday and today.  We went running around frantically while we had the chance, (Keelan was here with H and then she went to work and Kes was here for a bit after she got home from school.). The caregiver provider person had a death in the family and never showed up.

That’s fine, that’s exactly why I had children… come to find out.

I wanted to head to the outlet mall to the place I refer to as the bra store.  I was sooooo sorely in need of new bras!  I only had two and they were about 5 or 6 years old.  That’s 10 or 12 years, combined.  Whatev.

Anyway, we went there and John plopped his happy ass in the chair in the front of the store for disgruntled husbands and proceeded to be… gruntled?  He napped.  I headed to the back and spied the CLEARANCE rack.

I will make a long story short, (I know!  Too late!), here and just say this:

I got 5 new name brand bras and 9 pairs of socks and spent $29.00.  And the truly exciting news?  The bras FIT and don’t have a single hole in them.  (I am so not used to this.) John was proud.

We then left and proceeded to Kohl’s to check out the men’s belts and found there were no good deals to be had.  So we left.  Went to JC Penney and, knowing we had a $10.00 off coupon we looked at the type of trousers that John likes.  They’re normally $50.00 but the next morning, (this morning), they were going to be on sale for $20.00.  We found some in his size and he showed up there this morning and used his $10.00 off coupon and snagged the $50.00 pants for $10.00.

He’s a happy boy!  No kidding, he just kind of smiles all over when he saves a lot of money.  He is The Tightwad Extraordinaire.

But really, with  the economy sucking eggs the way it is, really, it just feels like we’re managing to keep up, rather than pulling ahead of the game when things like this happen.  Still.  It’s a good feeling.

Well Mither and Pop are gone and we had a very nice visit.  They headed out this morning about 11:00 and should be home about 6:00 if the traffic cooperates.  (Not likely.)

It was great seeing them since we don’t cross paths that much anymore and I can’t ever go and see them because there’s no one to take care of Henrietta.  That really sucks,  mostly because they have all the extra room.  John and I gave them our bedroom downstairs and we kicked Keelan out of her room, upstairs, onto the couch and we slept up there.  Mither’s knees don’t work too well anymore and Pop’s breathing is quite labored, (many, many years of smoking), so the stairs aren’t really an ideal fit.  But our bed was, so that worked out well.  They were here for six days and we got a good drink of each other.

We found out that John is going to be moved soon to another store in the district.  The bad news is that it’s just barely in the district.  Pearland to be exact.  He’s got a good hour commute to and from.  More likely an hour and a half.  Not to mention it’s the new store and the largest one of this company’s in Texas.  Yes, indeed, they are having him do another &%*#$^! grand opening.  Oh joy.  (Feel the sarcasm.)  With all the grand opening stores he’s worked at before, (yes, they make a habit of abuse), he’s been expected to work 14 hour days.  (I would like to point out that he is a salaried employee and receiving nothing extra for the extra hours put in.)  Except he only had to travel a few miles to get to work.  I believe the furthest he had to go was Galveston and it’s only about 25 minutes to get on the island.  They are supposed to announce the changes on Monday and I am pissed off about it.  I told him he may as well get an apartment in Pearland and stay there and come home on his days off.  He thought for a minute and told me he wasn’t sure which would cost more, the apartment or the gas to go to and from Pearland.  Not to mention our car has over 100,000 miles on it.  We paid it off last month and I am CERTAIN it will fall apart now. *bitch, bitch, bitch*

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.

Good news, well, for me, anyway!  Mither and Pop are coming to visit for a few days!  They are coming tomorrow and I really should be cleaning house right now.  I am going to have to get high behind here shortly.

Plus!  Nana will help me come to a firm decision about what color to paint the front door.  Here are more picture’s of paint swatches just to further confuse everybody.

I have been picking up more colors every time I run out with Lisa, (the friend who’s having remodeling work done and is spending a substantial amount of time at home improvement and paint stores).  We had lunch today while the caregiver provider was here with H and stopped at Sherwin Williams on the way home.  I’ll say one thing for the expensive paint people… they have bigger paint chips.  Home Depot’s are smaller and Walmart’s are even smaller.

Here are the ones on the other side of the door.

It’s beginning to look a little mosaicish on there.  Hummm,  Maybe I just need to tile the whole thing in different colors…

Things were moving right along today.  Everything going smoothly just like, proverbial, clockwork.  I should have been watching for the other shoe to drop.  I should have made everyone go freakin’ barefoot.

I went in and fed Henrietta breakfast and removed the tray and put her on the bedpan and she pooed and I cleaned her up and diapered her and took off her nightgown and put on her shirt and had her pants all ready, just had to empty her catheter bag that was rather full from overnight.  AS PER NORMAL PROCEDURE.

The home health care nurses that visit and leave me with the equipment that I need to own and operate an H. on a daily basis have consistently been inconsistent with the type of bag for the urine to collect in.  For several months I will have the kind I like with the plastic clip that pinches the flexible tube off.  Then you just tuck the end of the tube into a little hard plastic hollow bump attached to the side of the bag.  This is the kind I prefer.

So today I am in there working with the one I don’t like.  It has a green hard plastic tip on the end of the flexible tube that “clips” into a receptacle on the outside of the bag and a sharp edged metal clip on the flexible tube to pinch off the  flow of pee.

My reasons for not liking this particular kind of bag are varied, but, I do believe the most compelling is the fact that if, for some reason, the bag becomes unhooked from under the wheelchair and falls on the floor, (This has happened many times.), H will, inevitably, run over the bag and the metal clip punches a hole in the soft, pliable plastic bag.  Occasionally, this only creates a very small puncture and I don’t notice the leakage when she is taken into bed.  Then in the morning I am greeted with a very small puddle of, “Oh, what’s this?  Did she spill her juice?  There’s not much of it and it is right underneath where she was sitting…. OH SHIT.”  I then go in and look under her bed and there is small lake of urine.  A pond, if you will.

Getting back to my original enthralling story of urine mishaps, I happily toiled away at getting her dressed, pooped, peed and out of bed.  I was about to put on her pants and needed to empty the bag o’ pee.  I grasped the green plastic clip gizmo between my thumb and index finger, just as I had a million times before and pulled.  Nothing.  I pulled again, a bit harder.  Nothing.  Well, what is the matter with this stupid thing anyway? I pinched the two little things together harder that you have to do to get the damn contraption to work and finally the clip released.  It also, somehow, released the metal clip that holds back the flow of urine.  I sprayed pee all over the damn room.  It hit the bedside table and all over the floor.  Somehow I missed her bed skirt.  I don’t really know how that happened, it’s white for heaven’s sake.  Seems like, whatever demonic little twit it was that organized this assault on my day, would have managed to have the bed linens sprayed as well.  Turns out the devil was not that thorough in this particular war campaign against moi.

I know there will be a rallying of the troops and another assault.  I am waiting and watching.  I am a feared.  As far as WMD’s go this was just the urine.  Can poop be far behind?  No pun intended.

I know I will get a HUGE backlash if I don’t post actual photos of the catheter bag…  Fascinating, huh?  Aren’t you glad you stuck through the icky post to get to see this?

Here is the stupid clip thingy undone from the damn bag.  The metal clip thing on the tube had slid down and gotten caught between the stupid green pinching things.  Whatever.  I’m still mad…

See how sharp the sides of the metal clip are?  I mean, what could the reason for this possible be?  I suppose to use it to slit your own throat when the damn bag fails and you have to clean up an ocean of pee?  Yes.  I am certain that is what the manufacturer was thinking…

Yes.  Me memed.  But, it’s been a while so I will lovingly embrace this, er, cough, cough, opportunity.  To be honest, I had no idea what kind of blog fodder I was going to yank out of my ass dig up for today anyway, so this was quite opportune.  Let’s see… I went in to the doc for my well woman exam yesterday… I know we ALL want to relive that!

Right.  Moving right along, then.

My dear friend, Angie, over at Big Hair Envy tagged me and I’m really glad she did.  There are rules and things to do, and of course, my favorite part, people to tag, so I’ll get to it.

First of all, THE RULES!

1. Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 random or, (in my case), weird facts about yourself.

3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and link to their blog.

4. Let each person know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

There.  So far so good.  Now here are seven trivial bits of crap priceless bits of information that are juicy nuggets of knowledge sure to help you win at that next game of Trivial Pursuit.

Ahem.

1.  I detest rudeness.  And yet, I am always worried that someone will perceive me as being rude.

2.  I had a tiny toy poodle when I was a little girl named Blossom.

3.  I am very short-waisted.

4.  I tend to be a grammar snob.  I silently correct everything in my leeetle head…and then look down my nose at the offender.

5.  I am a horrible speller.  A spelling snob should attack me!

6. I get around to dusting immediately when I notice someone has started writing in it.

7.  I think some of the cattier messages written in the dust on my furniture are a clear sign that the author HAS TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS AND NEEDS TO PICK UP A FEW EXTRA CHORES, LIKE, OHHH I DUNNO, DUSTING!

OK, step number 3!  And the poor saps winners are:

Roger at A Screed in Time

SSG (not to be confused with MSG) at (Sometimes) Serendipitous Girl

Ree at My life as a Hotfessional

Tink over at Pickled Beef

Karen at The Rocking Pony

Tranny Head over at Law School Sucks (and So Do Lawyers)

Colleen at Wine Please

Now I’ve got to get around to contacting you guys!

OK, bear with me people!  This is not as painful as you might originally expect.  This brings us to step number 4 where I alert everyone to the awful truth that they have been memed and the good news is… envision drum roll… It’s not jury duty!  So buck up, and pass along the pain joy to your other good friends!  It’s the American way!

After my doctor’s appointment yesterday I spent the rest of my time away from the home with a girlfriend of mine helping her get her house ready for some guys to come and do some demolition.  Tearing out paneling, carpet and walls.  I am excited for her and also a little bit fearful.  I am worried that there’s going to be big trouble because she has nothing in writing saying when the re-construction will be over with, or even begun.  She trusts these people because her sister uses them and vouches for them, but contractors are FAMOUS for doing a super quick tear out for half the agreed upon amount and not ever returning to finish the job.  Or putting you off for months while you live in a shell of a house.

We will see.  I will pray.  Baby will grin.