Checking in…

April 28th, 2010

Yes, I AM back. But I’ve been in the garden getting my annual spring workout after a sedentary winter and, when not in the garden, I’ve been at the local greenhouse ooohing and ahhhing and spending money we don’t really have or lumbering stiffly around the house moaning and whining about my twisty, aching muscles. Ah, Spring!

But I thought you might be interested in this. Yes? No? Let me know. Personally, I think this is kind of silly as there isn’t anything I would complain about regarding my husband that I wouldn’t (and don’t) complain about directly to his face. Just ask him. Don’t ask the dogs, though, as they might beg to differ. Beg, get it?

Also, Bossy seems understandably unhappy to have missed John Cusack on her travels through California on her (No) Book Tour. Cusack has, apparently, been so busy defending his poor spelling and grammar skills that he missed her as she drove past. Too bad. She’d have gladly brought him a Burger King breakfast sandwich, and I’m sure she’d love to tutor him in spelling and grammar. And by spelling and grammar, I mean spelling. And grammar.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

Good things from bad movies

April 19th, 2010

The weekend’s weather was sunny and chilly with a raging hormone warning that turned out to be spot on.  By yesterday afternoon my choices seemed limited to a.) take a nap, or b.) commit a brutal and bloody murder. I opted for the nap.

Thanks to that mid-day sleep fest, at 12 a.m. I was  wide awake so I sat next to Yes,Dear who was cowering in a corner of the sofa watching TV while casting frightened glances my way.

He was watching RV, a 2006 stinker starring Robin Williams. There’s a scene in this movie where Williams, who doesn’t want his wife or kids to know he’s working during their family vacation,  has been up all night trying to find a cell phone signal in order to send an important presentation to his boss.  Just as the sun comes up the message transmits and he heads into the camper to get some sleep.  His wife awakens as he tries to slip into bed and says, “Oh, good, you’re up. Can you put the coffee on?”

“I’d love to,” he replies.

I’D LOVE TO. Isn’t that wonderful? So much better than the usually reluctant, occasionally hesitant, and frequently sarcastic Yes, Dear that earned my husband his pseudonym on this blog.

I suggested to Yes,Dear that, in the future, I would be ever so grateful if he would respond to all of my requests by saying, I’d love to.

He’s trying it on for size today.

I’m not sure how he feels about it, but I’m liking it. A lot.

Uh-oh…

April 18th, 2010

Procrastinating…

April 17th, 2010

I put on an island music CD just now to listen to while I clean house. So why am I here?

Good question.

Something happened on the way to the cleaning closet…

The year in review:

April 14th, 2010

Since I can’t remember details about yesterday, I really can’t be expected to remember too much about the past year, so I’m using my photos to try to piece it together in some sort of abbreviated, coherent narrative.

Last spring Yes,Dear and I took over the reigns of a baby equipment rental service that had us hopping all summer and will again soon. It was a veritable parade of pinchable cheeks -infants and babies and toddlers, oh my! – and we got to see the insides of some of the most amazing beach houses. Awesome! Especially the ones where the cribs had to be delivered to the third floor with no elevator…

We enjoyed visits from lots of family and friends. I learned to kayak. I must say, I move like a swan through the water. Too bad I look like a albatross getting out of the damn thing. I’ll be working on sticking my landings this summer.

After years of trying to get tickets, Yes,Dear and I saw Jimmy Buffett last June. So worth the wait. The crowd made it even better. SO MUCH FUN it should be illegal.

This is NOT us.

This couple were real sports about getting their photo taken. We dropped a couple bucks on concert T-shirts and an $8 Land Shark Lager or two and when the concert ended we were feeling pretty excellent thanks to the cloud of funny smoke wafting down from the lawn seats. And we both had a terrible case of the munchies.

We did some gardening, too. The kids gave me a beautiful lacecap hydrangea for Mother’s Day. Since our soil is about 70% sand, I amended it like crazy and crossed my fingers. It did well and bloomed beautifully. I was afraid we lost the hydrangea in November’s flood, but it’s doing well. Flood? Yup. Stay tuned. It’s still summer.

Yes,Dear spent the 4th of July in the hospital with chest pains. Again. Fortunately it turned out to be angina which is bad enough but it could have been way worse, and he had a view of the bay from his hospital bed which helped keep his spirits up.  I walked down to the pier at the end of our street to watch the fireworks our neighbors were setting off. It was one of the best displays ever, and no parking headaches.

July was also Hank month. I had started working on Yes,Dear, pleading for a new puppy when we found out Hank’s mom was expecting. He fought me tooth and nail for weeks but, in the end, he whimpered, put his tail between his legs, and bowed to my incessant pleas like a good boy. Now he loves this puppy more than he loves me.  And so does Sebastian. After having Hank around for 9 months now, Buster is warming up to him, so much so that he now finds Hank barely tolerable.

August was a difficult month. We lost my father-in-law just a couple weeks after his 88th birthday. It was a blow to lose such a lovely, kind, and loving old gentleman who was such a huge presence in the life of his family. Daughter wrote the most beautiful tribute to her grandad which was read by the minister during his eulogy. Much of the following six weeks or so was full of end-of-life paperwork, etc.

We did, however, manage to get a little fishing in and even caught some little fish.  Ugly little fish, but fish nonetheless.  Son Two had several photos exhibited in a local nature photography competition. He’s so incredibly talented. When he visits we always take a day to explore and take photos and he just blows me away with his mad photo skilz.

In October some rains came and we saw flooding, so of course, we took some photos. Little did we know that what we saw in October was nothing compared to what we’d see in November.  This is the view from the house in  October:

This is our view in November:

We didn’t know from flooding until November. We were stuck in the house for three days.  Fortunately we had good boots.

Christmas was great. The three kids were here so  all five of us were together for the first time in nearly a year.

And then there was snow. Lots and lots of snow upon snow. Dark, blizzardy days, I tell you. Especially when you live in an area where they close schools just due to the threat of snow. Three additional days trapped in the house. Good thing we still like each other most of the time. But whew! So glad THAT’s over. I’d post pictures of all the snow but I still break out in hives just thinking about looking at them. Maybe in July.

And now here we are, one year later. Daughter continues to do well in Chicago in her PhD program; she presented a paper at a conference in London last fall and has plans to do it again in Montreal later this year. She taught her first freshman comp class last semester and loved every minute of it. Son One is a whiz at his job and there’s talk of moving him into management. Son Two continues to pursue his photography and his portfolio is stunning. We are well and enjoying every minute of our life in our favorite place in the whole world.

Another Delmarva summer is right around the corner. We can’t wait!

Test post from Blackberry

April 12th, 2010
Test photo of Beagle w/Paint on his Ear

Test photo of Beagle w/Paint on his Ear

This is a test. This is only a test. If this was an actual post, you would tune in here for photos and information.

Tap, tap, tap…

April 9th, 2010

Hello? Is this thing on?

Is anyone still there?

If so, welcome back to my UnBlog.

I’d like to extend my thanks to the hordes of Eastern European readers I’ve amassed over the last year who have so kindly continued to comment during my absence, particularly those who were thoughtful and enterprising enough to comment in broken English rather than in Cyrillic (my Cyrillic is rusty, I admit).

I’m also grateful to those who have been so incredibly concerned about my health. The countless reams of valuable information about cheap pharmaceuticals have been a Godsend. I’m sorry to have worried you – I’m fine, really. Finally, many thanks to those who’ve tried to keep my spirits up by forwarding jokes like this:

Where does you find dog with not legs?

Right where you leaves him.

Good one! That had me chuckling for days…

Do y’all have any idea how long it takes to delete 12,000 spam comments, twenty at a time? I’m going to be busy for a while. Why didn’t you tell me about Akismet before I went AWOL?

Anyway, now that Spring has arrived and the Earth is once again showing signs of beautiful no-longer-buried-under-two-feet-of-snow life, I figure this is an appropriate time to resurrect this blog. Hopefully over the next week or so, I’ll catch up on recording the highs and lows of the past twelve months.

For starters, meet Hank the Beagle…

…who joined our circus last July – because one can never have enough poop to scoop.

Goldfingers

April 27th, 2009

Fairy dust?

I wish.

Pine pollen.

It was too hot to close the windows the other night, so we didn’t.  Big mistake.  Apparently, the heat prompted our neighborhood pine trees to begin spewing pollen.  We have been pollinated, people!

Our house has been pollinated.  The dogs have been pollinated.  It’s everywhere, on everything, including in our ears, our eyelashes, between our toes.  Our deck is yellow.  The pollen seems to have formed a particular attachment to electronics, so I now have to take my computer with me to Philly this weekend when I pick daughter up for her short summer break to get it de-pollinated.

And I have to do an environmental cleaning of our house, but will have to wait until the trees are finished doing their tree-thing.

This is, like, the ULTIMATE test of my Zyrtec.

All is well here.  We’re fairly well settled in – a few more things to put away, a few more things to do to the house, but no rush.  It’s funny, semi-retirement: you work like crazy to get settled and then you sit there and stare at each other and say now what?

Since we both like to eat and since paying bills is always a good idea, the logical answer to now what? appears to be finding JOBS in this dismal economy.  Heh.

So Yes, Dear will be working as a delivery driver a few days a week starting in the next week or so and we have taken over the management a resort area franchise service business which I’ll explain in more detail soon.  We’ve also started working on putting together an Etsy shop.  Again, details to follow.

Finally, to the comment spammers who seem to think this middle aged mom has any interest in seeing Miley Cyrus n*a*k*e*d, well, that’s just WRONG.  And to the spammer who thinks I want to see Charles Grodin n*a*k*e*d?  Oh, come on!  Ewwwww.

Hope to be here more often in the near future. I have been keeping up as much as possible with my feed reader but haven’t had time to comment much.  I miss you guys.

So how the heck are YOU doing?

Look who’s here!

April 13th, 2009

The LILACS!

Just Awesome.

Hope your Easter was happy!  Ours was great.  The boys came down for the weekend and my sister visited yesterday for our Annual Welcome Spring Easter Barbecue.  Yeah!  Why wait until it’s 75 degrees and sunny when you can warm yourself over the grill in 50 degree temperatures with the wind howling at 30 mph? And why eat HAM when you can have THIS:

Mmmmmmmmmmm

And this:

And these:

And CANDY.  Which I would have photographed except WHERE IS IT?  I can’t FIND IT!  OH MY GOD WE WERE ROBBED!

Wait.  What?

Oh.  I ate it all?

All of it?

Really?

Never mind.

By the way, you know what I think would make a REALLY, REALLY interesting TV show?  Just combine The Housewives of New York City with Wife Swap.  Send Bethanny to some redneck house in a holler somwhere and The Countess to a family farm or something.  Just don’t send Jill to my house.  I hate what she did with the apartment.  I LOVE this idea.  Who’s with me?  Show of hands…

Nothing but a big tease…

April 2nd, 2009

Spring, that is.

Harrumph.

Sorry for the blog silence.  I’ve been working on a project to be announced soon and looking for part time work.  I still have my work-from-home clients, but damn, retirement is expensive.  And living with a retired husband is NOT easy.  I’m trying to make his life so miserable that he’ll go back to work and get out of my hair and I think I’m finally making inroads.  He’s starting to roll his eyes every time I call his name instead of just the third or fourth time.

Speaking of Yes,Dear, today is our anniversary.  Twenty six  years or, as he says, the best two years of our lives.  Haha.  He’s a funny, funny man.

Totally unrelated:  There is a flock of seagulls nesting at the end of our street and they chatter for a half hour or so every evening as they settle in for the night.  Since we no longer have kids at home, we find ourselves talking to the gulls saying things like Girls, settle down and get to sleep, or Quiet down kids!  Don’t make us come up there.  And then we laugh.

Life is good.