Archive for the ‘Stuff and Nonsense’ Category

Checking in…

Wednesday, 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.

Tap, tap, tap…

Friday, 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.

Nothing but a big tease…

Thursday, 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.

Because I’m mature like that…

Friday, March 27th, 2009

This past Sunday I drove Son One home and stayed at my sister’s place until Tuesday, giving her a hand with some things around the house.  Yes,Dear did not grocery shop while I was away.  He went to the dollar store and picked up a can of Spam and a couple cans of potted meat (what is potted meat, anyway? I had a Potted Pelican once in the islands, but that’s something very different and much tastier). He can argue all he wants that his trip to the dollar store constitutes “grocery shopping”, but we all know better, don’t we?

Today Yes,Dear drove up to Philly to visit his parents.  Did I grocery shop?  Hell no.  I think Yes,Dear was hoping I would have to because the cupboards are, if not bare, at best sparsely populated.

But I dug around and look what I found:

I am SO set.

In other news, I’ve learned that the police department in the town where we lived before our move has been receiving calls from residents who report seeing coyotes in their yards.

In suburban Philadelphia.

Really.

Turns out what they are seeing are foxes.

Holy hell people!  Even if you don’t know the differences between a coyote and a fox, odds are you’re paying a fortune for the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.  Watch and learn something, for Pete’s sake!  I’m embarrassed for you.

Okay.  Now a question.  If you think you have an answer, please speak up.  Since Yes,Dear and I moved into our new home we’ve been finding rabbit tails in our yard.  We’ve found five or six of them now.  Why?  What’s happening to the rabbits?  I know it’s not our dogs.  Not only have we found no evidence beyond a couple of bunny tails in the fenced portion of our yard, but we’ve actually found more bunny tails outside of the fence.  Besides, Sebastian would probably die of a heart attack if he ever came face to face with a rabbit.

Can this be explained by some sort of natural phenomenon or are our new neighbors trying to tell us something? Is this a Fatal Attraction kind of thing?  Do rabbits shed their tails?  This is upsetting, especially with Easter right around the corner.

Still trying to catch up on my reader.  Hope all is well with y’all.  I live south of the Mason Dixon line now, so I can say that.

Maybe you’d better take it with you after all…

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

I was supposed to teach the boys how to do their own taxes this year, but we only had an hour last week when we were all together to get them done, so I ended up bringing home their W-2′s.

Did I spend this beautiful snowbound day wrapped in flannel, drinking hot toddies and enjoying a good book?  No.  I did the boys’ taxes online.  And in the process I learned something rather appalling.

Just look:

Click graphic to enlarge.

If your filing status is DECEASED, odds are paying taxes is the last thing on your mind, but with the economy in a shambles apparently Ed Rendell has resorted to desperate measures to replenish the state coffers (coffins?  ahem).  Sorry to hear you’ve been under the weather – yeah, six feet under – but you’ll have to pony up like everybody else…

Rendell’s taxing zombies.

At least he’s made it possible for the zombies to file online to avoid grossing out the living.  It’ll be tricky, what with the skin sloughing off their fingers and leaking gooey bodily fluids all over their keyboards, but they certainly can’t just saunter into any old tax preparer’s office looking like that now, can they?

Someone might want to let Rendell know that it’s never a good idea to piss off the zombies.

Thank God we moved.

Open IM, insert foot…

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Last night Son Two emailed me the transcript of a IM conversation he had with a friend regarding a Facebook post.  This cracks me up:

Friend (11:00:11 PM): is there a new lady friend in your life?

Friend (11:00:40 PM): izzz all g00d, and whos the biddy!

Son Two (11:00:52 PM): theres no lady friend

Son Two (11:00:55 PM): sadly

Friend (11:01:15 PM): oh, some girl is talking to you pretty nicely on your note i thought it might have been her

Friend (11:01:15 PM): haha

Friend (11:01:17 PM): sorry dude

Son Two (11:01:30 PM): what girl? haha

Friend (11:02:01 PM): i think her name was tina

Son Two (11:02:14 PM): thats my mom asshole

Friend (11:03:18 PM): HAHAHAHA

Friend (11:03:20 PM): oh god

Friend (11:03:24 PM): i am so sorry

From the back of beyond…wherever that is.

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Daughter is here with us in the “back of beyond” as she calls it.  She flew in from Chicago yesterday, bringing with her Chicago weather which promises to dump 6″ to 8″ of snow upon our heads starting tonight and continuing tomorrow.  We are thrilled to have her even though she thinks we live in Podunk and is, apparently, The Snow Queen.

But we still love her.  That’s just how she rolls.

The books are nearly unpacked.  Only ten boxes to go.

First it looked like this:

Then it looked like this:

And then it looked like this:

And then I died.

No?

Okay, and then I shelved all of those (except for the dog) because I ran out of room on the dining room floor.

And THEN I unpacked most of the remaining 30 or so boxes directly onto the shelves.  Alphabetically.  By author.  Which proved to be more difficult than I anticipated.  I know some people count on their fingers, but I found myself alphabetizing on my fingers.  That’s embarrassing to admit, but I know some of you must do it to and I just want you to know you’re in good company.

You don’t do that?  Oh.

Never mind.

Since we’ll be snowed in for a day or so, I think I’ll unpack and shelve the rest of the books and maybe the three boxes labeled “Random Surface Crap from Master Bedroom”.

I can’t wait.  It’ll be like Christmas in March.

Week 5 Post Movem

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Wouldn’t you think we’d be all settled in by now?

Me too.

But not quite.

We have definitely made progress.  We’re down to about this many boxes:

The bookshelves that divide the living room from the office are finally put together so we have somewhere to unload those last boxes.  The fussy little guy who helped us at Ikea made it clear that their Billy bookcases are NOT meant to be used as ROOM DIVIDERS because they should be ANCHORED to a WALL to ensure they won’t TIP and HURT or MAIM someone.  So I assured him we’d anchor them, which we did.  To each other.  Now if they fall, they won’t HURT or MAIM anyone because anyone unlucky enough to be under them will be DEAD.

The guest room, which has served as an attic for the last five weeks actually has a bed in it now (Thank you, Craig’s List) and a path cleared to the bed.

The kitchen is about 1/3 painted (except for the cabinets, which is making me twitchy so that will happen soon…)  The cabinets pictured below were a lucky Craig’s List find.  And you can see where the wall painting stopped…

We don’t have the budget or the energy right now to drywall the ceilings in the kitchen, hallway, and master bedroom so we will find attractive ceiling tiles to replace the crappy looking old ceiling tile that’s up there now.  Crappy old ceiling tile is common in summer homes, as this place used to be.  Fluorescent lights?  Not so much.  They are SO OUT OF HERE.  But I have to find someone to put up new fixtures as Yes,Dear isn’t allowed to mess around with electrical stuff because of his defibrillator.

What a wuss.

Daughter will be visiting for a week over her Spring Break, starting this weekend.  We can’t wait.  Son One might make it down for a couple of days while she’s here.  Son Two was down recently for a weekend which was great.  We explored Cape Henlopen State Park.  All the years we’ve been going to CHSP, you’d think we’d have seen it all but, believe me, when you’re with an experienced urban explorer you find things you never expect to.  See?

It’s an old WWII bunker with several rooms.  It’s about the size of a small house.  Off the beaten path.  Off limits.  Under a dune.  I’m just glad we didn’t get caught because I don’t want to end up in the local paper’s police blotter before I’ve met all our neighbors.  Wouldn’t want to start off on the wrong foot.

Speaking of neighbors, here are a few we met on a walk one morning:

Nutmeg asked what body of water it is that we can see from our house.  The Delaware River?  No.  The Schuylkill River?  Nope.  The ocean?  We wish.  It’s actually Indian River Bay and it’s lovely and sparkly and soothing to watch.

We are so happy it should be illegal.

The dogs are happy too, except early in the mornings when the hunters are out in the marsh at the end of the street.  Sebastian will NOT go outside while they’re shooting.  I don’t blame him.

Yes,Dear is unhappy because his garage is packed full of stuff from end to end, but we’ll get around to clearing it out eventually.  I made the movers put the fishing rods and beach chairs in the outside shower because if they stuffed even one more thing in that garage Yes,Dear would have killed me dead.

I’m almost caught up in my reader, although there are a few of you who I refuse to “mark as read” and who post ALL THE DAMN TIME.  Slow down, okay?  Let me catch up.  And then there’s Jack who disappeared himself while I was away.  Jack, I MISS YOU.  Please reconsider…

So.  After setting up our neighborhood library branch tomorrow, I should be back to a fairly relaxed schedule and therefore a more regular posting schedule.  It’ll be so great to be back!  As I mentioned in my previous post, stay tuned for pix of The Little Bayside Bungalow furnished almost exclusively by Craig’s List of Philadelphia, Freecycle, and The Salvation Army!

P.S.  Ruth, please, please, PLEASE tell me which store will be carrying your goodies so I can get the MOUSSE CAKE you and Bossy posted pictures of.  I WANT it.  I MUST HAVE it.  I WILL have it.  I’ll be in town this coming weekend to pick Daughter up at PHL and the following weekend for the Flower Show and my hips and I want to support your new enterprise…

Oh, yeah…

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

I forgot to tell you.  I learned something this week about dogs.

If a dog pees in the snow in the yard, he will see no reason not to pee in the snow on the balcony.

Just thought I’d pass that along for anyone who is too dumb, like me, to think this through sufficiently before allowing it to happen.

Up for air…

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

Hi!  How the heck are ya?  I’ve missed you guys!

Wait, I need a sandwich…

Ok, I’m back.

The move went fine smoothly.

Right.  The move went.

Actually, the move wasn’t bad except for all the sorting and packing and moving and unpacking and sorting and stuff like the freaking cold 16 degree day we moved in so the doors were open all day and stuff.  Oh, and when the movers were getting ready to leave after loading the first day we found a few small items they had forgotten, so we did a quick look-see to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything else.  Other than the DRYER and the REFRIGERATOR, they hadn’t.  Oh.  My.  God.

And then there was the morning before the move when I was supposed to meet the movers at my friend’s garage so they could load all the booty I’ve collected from Craig’s List and Freecycle since we listed our old house a year and a half ago and they were an hour and a half late when I needed to be home to finish packing the kitchen so they could load it on their truck when they came to our house after emptying the garage and our storage units because they still had to clean up the muddy mess left by the OTHER moving crew the day before and I hadn’t showered or combed my hair (or brushed my teeth, I think, but I had no plans to kiss the movers so who cares) and I couldn’t stop crying tears of frustration and exhaustion and, oh, did I mention it was, like, 12 degrees that day? so the tears and the snot were freezing on my face until I dug around in my friend’s basement and found a roll of Viva paper towels and this crazed hysterical unkempt snot rocket that was me scared the movers so bad when they finally showed up they would have done anything for me except show up on time because it was already too late for that.

Oh, and the guy who bought our house didn’t even wait until we moved to cut down the huge fabulous trees that made the front yard look and feel like a park.  When we left only the trunks remained, standing in our yard like two sad totem poles.  We made sure the neighbors knew that the deforestation was the new owner’s fault.  Welcome to the neighborhood, you tree-hater, you!

Fortunately, both settlements went off without a hitch.  When we arrived at the new house, we looked around and headed for a hotel.  One more night (after two at the old house) on the Aerobed was simply out of the question.  We called the movers and told them we were not staying at the property and asked them to give us a call an hour before the truck would arrive in the morning so we could meet the movers at the property.  We got a call at 8:30 the next morning.  The movers were at the property.

We made them wait while we showered, dressed, had coffee and a bite to eat.

It was small of us and I know, I know, vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord and all that but, screw it, it was satisfying.

All went well with the unloading.  Nothing that couldn’t be fixed was broken, nothing was missing except for one leg to our TV armoire and a pair of crutches. We’re still finding items marked for the guest room in the garage and items marked for the garage in the guest room, but since they both start with the letter G, that’s an understandable mistake, right?

Oh, and for a while after the movers loaded it appeared that they had packed my sister’s cat litter scoop with our stuff.  And then a box of meat that had been removed from the freezer so the movers could take the refrigerator disappeared and we were concerned that it might be on the truck thawing out for three days next to our sofa, but we found it.

And the week we moved Buster had surgery to remove a benign tumor.  He was very good about his stitches and didn’t need an E-collar, but we considered getting one for Sebastian who kept licking Buster’s stitches.  Ew.  The dogs were boarded during most of the move because we didn’t feel the need to add to the fun and hilarity with incessant barking.

The unpacking is progressing, some days faster than others.  My office is still full of boxes because in our old house, we HAD WALLS.  The new house is a more open floor plan downstairs and has rooms built under sloping eaves upstairs and what does one do with all the wall art when moving from a traditional walled house to a house with an open floor plan?  One leaves boxes of pictures in one’s office.

We’re getting there.  We were actually able to relax a bit when it snowed the other day and enjoy our snow-covered view.  Boy howdy, let me tell you, a couple inches of snow down here throws the locals into a tizz.

I’m going to sign off now because I have no doubt bored you to tears.  Hope you have a roll of Viva handy.

Besides, I’ve got more unpacking to do (the kitchen spices, I think, are still on the screened porch.)

So, I’m glad to be back and I can’t wait to catch up with all that’s going on with YOU.

And soon, once the settling in is a little more, well, settled, I’ll post pictures of the fabulous house furnished exclusively by Craig’s List of Philadelphia, Freecycle and The Salvation Army.  Stay tuned, you won’t want to miss that.

I do love a bargain.

P.S.  Yes,Dear and I had an argument about the stove in the new house.  “We need a new stove,” I’d say.  “Why?” he’d ask.  “Because the one that’s there is brown,” I’d explain.  “But it works,” he’d respond.  “But it’s brown,” I’d say.  This went on and on.  Well, we got a brand new white stove, but now he expects me to USE it to, like, cook and stuff.  So who won this argument?  I’m not sure.