Nice Mullet

In need of normal

Well, here I sit, still on vacation, but desperately trying to carve out a little quiet space for myself. The wedding is over, and yes, as luck would have it, my brother's best man had a mullet. A mullet! Not only that, he embraces his mullet. I snapped a few pics of it, but my camera just ran out of juice and now I have to charge the batteries if I can find my charger. For a week, the tv has been on constantly and my mother's husband has had a constant buzz. Cheap rum and Mountain Dew have been consumed by the gallon.....seriously. In fact, earlier tonite, he was watching an old war movie, and speaking "Chinese" to no one in particular. At least, he thought it was Chinese. Not sure what my mother has ever seen in him.......

Luckily, I escaped for two nights to my BFF's house, but that siesta was far too short. We drank lots of vodka, ate lots of brie and then stalked old classmates on MySpace. Her poor husband has had his fill of women considering we are the exact same person in two different bodies; add the kid to the mix, and he was way out of his league. It was a good time. The next stop is my other good friend and the big meet and greet with her new husband, the UPS man.....and we all know how I feel about the men of UPS! I've promised her that I will try to contain myself and behave.

On our regular home front, I think the mate is ready for us to be home. Although, I don't think he'll every actually admit that he missed the drama that the kid and I bring to the table on a daily basis, he's acting out by having parties and making unauthorized, expensive, purchases.... lol. Thankfully, we leave to go home very, very soon......before he bankrupts us and gets arrested. And here he thought it was me that would need bail money!

Well, that's all for now. I'll post again very soon. So much too tell, but so little privacy to tell the stories in. I miss you all!!!

Wedding Eve

Well, we made it all the way here.....963 loooonnnngggg miles. But we did it. And we've been here for less than 2 full days, and already, I'm ready to pack 'er in and head home. Gas is $3.60 a gallon here, most likely because it seems that everyone drives an SUV. No kidding, when we stopped at the gas station, there were 15 vehicles there, including our car. The other 14 were either trucks or SUV's......and they wonder why they are considered a "high demand" area. Hmph. In addition to the outrageous gas prices, my mother is driving me absolutely crazy.......she's been bitching about the mother of the bride non-stop and every time I talk about going to visit my friends, she gives me this guilt trip, which pisses me off. Then last night, she was mad because the bridesmaids bought matching teal dresses and spent a bunch of time telling the kid that she was going to look out of place in her pink flower girl dress. So, now the kid wants a new flower girl dress. Aagh!

Anyway, sorry for the vent, but I can't help it. The TV is on constantly, and very loud.....did I mention it's also 65"? Who needs a television that is that large??? That's what it is out here though......who can have the most stuff? My mother's husband is a drunk truck-driver, and now he's around too and the conversations consist of him rambling while she yells and screams at him. I want my regular life back!!

On The Road......

Well, this post is coming to you from the NY Thruway......we've made it 1/4 of the way in to our journey and it's been pleasantly uneventful. Bleary eyed, we pulled out at 5:30 this a.m. and are spending the evening in Niagara Falls....I'll post some pictures - and updates of this suicide inducing wedding - on a regular basis......and of course, I will not be able to go an entire week without reading all of you either.

Oh! And one other MAJOR big-time deal-i-o for me!! I was selected to begin writing a "Dear Abbey" column of sorts.....except it's for mom's. Apparently, someone likes the obnoxious humor that I try to convey on this blog and wants me to do the same for the column. I will post a link as soon as I have one.

Until the next stop......

Looking for Technical Help

Alrighty bloggy friends.....I need your help. Ocassionally, I get a comment or two posted to my blog.....which thrills me to no end because I like to believe that I am not the only person who reads this thing! Anyway, I have searched and searched and have not yet found a way to respond to comments that are left via Blogger. Any suggestions? Is this why many of you prefer Typepad? Should I move? Egads! I don't know.......

This will now plague me until I can get a resolution.....and I'm leaving to go straight to Hell itself tomorrow, so act fast......I musn't be distracted whilst driving 963 miles!!!!

To the few that have left comments - plus Meg - thank you! I'm not ignoring you, I promise!!

Up North

Well, after a short trip up North, where the drink of choice is either B&J wine coolers or coffee brandy and Guns & Ammo outsells Glamour everytime, I'm packing up the kid and we're headed West, to an equally disturbing place; a little town called Zeeland, MI, where the high school mascot is a chicken (seriously) and there are 12+ churches for a population of 8000 people. Did I mention it's also a dry town? This should be interesting as it's a town I grew up in, and according to MySpace, most of my high school classmates are still hanging out there with their John Deer Tractors, and the gun racks in the back of their pick-up trucks. When I moved there at the age of 7, there was a sign as you drove in that said, and I'm so not kidding, "Welcome to Zeeland: where the chicks lay better." Humph. Even I knew that wasn't a good idea......needless to say, it's history is rich with chicken farming and the yummy place I used to work, Herman Miller. Oh, the days of ultra chic home furnishings for absolute pennies......I miss that job sometimes.

Wish me luck, this is the big wedding event.......a week to go and my mother is already fighting with the brides' mother; she's even told the bride's mother to tread lightly because her daughter is coming to town and, apparently, I'm supposed to be kicking someone's ass. She wonders why I live so far away.

All I can say is.....WTF?

OK, not a long post today, but, one of my little side jobs as a freelancer is writing articles about fashion trends.....I'm not a fashionista by any means, but I certainly know that this is so not cool.

Mother's Day Bust

If you believe Hallmark, Mother's Day is a day to celebrate those wonderful creatures that gave you life.......if you pay attention to reality, even just a little bit, you notice that Mother's Day is actually a day to push said creatures to the very end of their wit's, only to do a sudden 180 when threatened with your life......at least, if you live in my house. Over here at Brookview Terrace, there is no "mom, you're the greatest" or "mom, if it weren't for you, I would be lost" instead it's "well, tough noodles because......" or "but that's not fair" or better yet "but I want that......" am I just raising a really selfish child? or is it just the age of 'almost' 8? Once upon a time, my step-mum, who is brilliant, told me that it's either the odd years or the even years that are always hard......never both. Up until now, her theory has tested right, but since 7 has been mildly challenging and 8 appears to be horrendous, that jig might be up.

Yesterday began innocently enough with a sweet little peck on the cheek and an "I love you" while I was still lying in bed. However, my angel disappeared and a character straight out of Stephen King showed up when we started to talk about the birthday party that is coming up. "What do you mean I can't invite my entire class to Chuck E Cheese? It's only $18 a kid!!!" Hm, I'm no math whiz, but quickly tabulating, I'd say that comes to roughly 'no freakin' way'......for several reasons. One, I don't want to be responsible for 18 screaming children in a public place.....security measures or not. Second, we're going away for a week over Labor Day and I'd like to have some cash-ola to go on vacation. Third, I don't care for the dancing characters at Chuck E Cheese and would rather gouge my own eyeballs out with dull pencils than sit through 2 hours of listening to them. Gr......

The day only got better from there.......4 hours at the out-laws house......a walk around the neighborhood where the kid complained loudly and constantly that she was dying because she was so thirsty and my dance with a butchered cow. What? you ask.....A butchered cow? We're not quite vegetarian, but we're not sold on the idea of meat and potatoes 5 nights a week either, so it's a rare occasion that we actually try to eat a steak in this house; apparently for good reason. However, Dan decided that yesterday would be a great day to have steak and charged me with marinating it. So, I dumped in some olive oil with garlic and spices and all was good. Until I decided to pick up the container and shake it up a bit so the oil was evenly distributed. Yeah, how about checking that lid before you shake it like ya love it? That's right folks, the lid came off an I had three pieces of steak flying around - thank God it only landed on the stove and not the floor. But still.....on Mother's Day, do you really want to deal with raw meat???

Toward the evening hours, I managed to escape to the yard to clip some forsythia.....which gave me some happiness for a little bit. Then the kid and a bunch of her neighborhood friends decided to go 'trash picking' and drag home a bunch of stuff to build a fort out back. We're not talking little stuff either. We've got a 3' artificial Christmas tree, a waffle maker and a toaster oven, a plastic filing cabinet, a coat rack and a landscape picture framed in one of those great 80's gold frames. Fantastic.

Happy Friday!

You know, one of the things I love most about my new job is the freedom. Really. I have a great space in the house for my office and with a gorgeous lilac bush and an apple tree right outside the window, I have tranquility all around me. Plus, it doesn't hurt that I'm able to sit on the deck, in the sun with a Geary's, and conduct interviews either.....LOL. But really, I love all the new people I'm meeting. I spent an hour on the phone the other day with the nicest woman, interviewing her about a new art incubator......of course, initially I had no idea what an art incubator was, but she caught me right up, no worries. I've also discovered that I have time to do things like walk my dog, participate on the PTO and be creative, which has always been something I've liked to do, but not had time for. And did I mention that the kid seems a lot happier, just in general, now that I'm available to pick her up from school each day? I'm not sure life could get much better than this.......

Oy. I'm getting mushy in my old age......

Seven Random Things.

Today, Meg posted 7 random things about herself and invited others to join......typically, I don't do such things, not because I don't like to, but because I feel I have nothing unusually interesting going on in my life.....however, it is Monday morning, I've been up most of the night working on finals so I'm in a euphoric state that only the overly- caffeinated & sleep-deprived can achieve and I'm trying like hell to avoid the laundry list of stuff that HAS to get done today. What better way to convince my readers that, indeed, I'm just this side of the crazy line and share my love of all things bloggy, than to participate in a little game of bloggy tag? So, here goes:

*I cracked the same kids head open 3 times in 2 years; once with a rock, once with a boomerang and once with a door. That last one with the door was an accident.

*When I was 4, a bundle of shingles fell off of a roof and landed on my leg; when I walked in the house to tell my mother that my leg was broken, she didn't believe me. Maybe I should have defined the word "shock" for her first.

*My daughter gave herself a mullet, shaved her legs, and super glued her teeth together, all in the same week. Don't bother calling DHS, there has to be some sort of statute of limitations on that kind of stuff.

*I used to own a women's consignment shop on Munjoy Hill - that was my favorite job ever.

*I have never owned any one car for more than two years.....can we say commitment issues?

*I don't own an iPod yet.

*I still don't really know what I want to be when I grow up.

Enough about me, how about you?

One of my favorite days of the year!

Well my friends, today marks the beginning of the World Over Imports warehouse sale! Goodie, goodie, gumdrops! And just as soon as I drop the kid off at school, I'm going to get myself a cup of coffee and head over there. I'm specifically looking to purchase a papasan chair, which is completely old-school, but I had one in college and I loved to curl up in it and read a good book. I want one for our new bedroom so I can do just that......the disadvantage to having a partially dormered upstairs is not just that we have doorways large enough for only hobbits to walk through them, we also do not have room for a traditional desk set up.....so, I am going to tuck this in under our dormered window and hope that I can use it without a light to read by because the ceiling slants so drastically right there that I don't think a light and table will fit. I also need to stop slacking and get plans made for the kids birthday....she wants a sleepover party at a hotel with a pool. Where does she come up with this stuff???

Git 'er done.

As I sit here this morning with my little cup 'o joe, I realize this is the first time that I've been up early enough on a sunny day to enjoy the light that comes pouring through our kitchen windows....it's wonderful. So wonderful in fact, that, although it's searing my retinas, I'm not willing to pull the blinds. And it's shining so nicely thru my new IKEA tealight holders that I bought, specifically for that sill......love it......anyway, it's shaping up to be a nice day.....our flower beds need some attention and I am working on my last week of school. I need to be more like Meg and find one week where I will only tackle the stuff that needs to get done i.e. auction stuff, getting the word out about Shawls4Survivors - I have managed to let that drop completely off the map, rick-racking my blinds in my office (sounds fun doesn't it?), making instructional folders for the knitting class I'm teaching over a Syd's school, birthday party invites for the kid, and finding two perfectly, perfect yet not overpriced patio sets for the backyard so we can spend some time entertaining this summer. Word on the street is that we've got quite the party friendly neighbors here......of course, accomplishing all that would mean ignoring all my bloggy friends for a whole week, and I'm not sure I'm ready for a trial separation yet.....LOL.

Cookies and the UPS Man.

So yesterday, as it was pouring rain, I was grocery shopping; one of those massive trips that sometimes happens because I put it off until there is literally one brown banana on the counter and some chunky 1/2 & 1/2 in the fridge. We've all done it - at least I hope so. I hate to think that I'm the only one so terribly neglecting my own familys nutritional needs...... anyway, it was gross out and by the time I got home, I was in a crumpity mood.....very Ms. McCrankity. So, to cheer myself up, I decided I would bake some cookies....to try to turn the tide from McCrankity to Betty........Crocker that is.

As I'm baking, a beautiful sight arrived at my door, in the form of the UPS man; and I have to ask - have any of you EVER seen a UPS man that is not attractive? What is it about that big brown truck and that uniform? I don't even really care for the color brown, but when one of those guys is sporting it, I'm all for it.....I think I actually pranced to the door in my little pink retro flower-power apron I've got.......the package wasn't even for me, it was for the kid, but at that point, I didn't even care. I'm going to Michigan for a wedding in a few weeks and one of my very dear friends recently married a UPS guy......I'm very much looking forward to meeting him Rae......I promise, I'll try to contain myself.......