TEXAS

I live in north Texas, and have come to expect erratic weather patterns. But you know, when I got home today, this is what I saw when I looked out on the patio:

Yes, that is my thermometer, which reads 92 degrees. Yes, 92 degrees in FEBRUARY. This is ridiculous people! Normal this time of year is in the 60's. 30 degrees above normal. Yeah, I think that since I packed up my summer clothes back in November, there has been a total of maybe 10 days that were really too cool to wear my capris and sandals. I LOVE living in Texas, but sometimes the schitzophrenic weather drives me nuts. It's not uncommon to have a 35 degree change in temperatures from the time my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. until I get home in the evening. The moral of this story is, if you are coming to Texas anytime between February and April, you really might want to bring both summer and winter clothes, because not only might you need them, you might need them in one day.

NTIF is in a week, and I am definitely ready for a dose of live celtic music! I'm also hoping to get my photo made for my participant pass at Scarby, as long as I'm out there in garb, might as well, right? I'll have friends in from Canada for the weekend as well, which I'm sure will prove fun, especially since my poor boy cat Leo, is afraid of one of them. I'm hoping that with only the 4 of us in the house he'll be a little less freaked out than he was last summer, when he first met Nelson, as well as 6 other people he'd never seen before, plus a couple that he's met but doesn't see often. Perhaps I should go ahead and break out the Rescue Remedy....

Unfriended & Other Stuff

Well, it appears that the Roomie From Hell decided to unfriend me on MySpace. Now, I don't particularly care, as I can still get to and see her profile, but I do find it amusing. She thinks, I know, that she is the victim in the whole debacle, and I'm sure feels perfectly justified in unfriending me. As I said, don't really give a damn. The main reason that I didn't unfriend her first is that I wanted to see how long it would take before she changed her profile and started trash talking me. So far she hasn't, and that's good. I do find it amusing that it happened almost EXACTLY a month after I kicked her out of the house. Crawfish season has arrived, which means our weekly dinners are at the same cajun restaurant every week from now until June. Yeah, I'm not so happy about this, partly because waterliving creatures and I have this mutual dislike for each other, but also because in the past year, my body has also decided that I can no longer have Andouille sausage. That was the one thing I liked there. So, now my choices are a burger, blackened stuff, which is unacceptable because I don't like eating charcoal, fried chicken strips, chicken fried chicken/steak or a salad. I've taken to having a kid burger and a small side salad. This week, we elected to sit on the patio, and there were a dozen of us. For some reason, they put the new guy out on the patio, with the big party. Yeah, great. I ordered my burger, substituting mashed potatoes for the fries, and adding a salad. Two other people ordered salads, and two more ordered appetizers in addition to their crawfish. The crawfish orders were 5 orders of 2lbs each, 1 of 1 lb, and 1 of 3 lbs. What arrived at our table was 1 order of 4 lbs (which, in the grand scheme of things wasn't a huge deal, as 2 of the 2 lb orders were on the same ticket), the 3 lb, and 4 single lbs. No salads, no appetizers, no burgers. My burger came out in a minute, but I had to ask again for my salad, because only 1 salad was delivered. The second lb orders arrived after the 2 salads, but still before 1 appetizer. Notice I've not said anything about receiving my potatoes. Because I never did get them, and one of the appetizers never appeared either. In the end, my burger got comp'd, though I have no idea whether it was because the waiter was so bad, or if it was because he somehow screwed up printing my ticket and lost the burger in the abyss someplace. Don't really care either, cuz it saved me some $. In other news, I started back to the gym this week. Monday I went to the gym close to the house, and did 1/2 hour of cardio, but didn't try to do anything more because it was 5 before I got there and the crowd was just annoying. I decided to stop at another location that's on my way home, and I can make it to before 4:30. By the time that I was leaving after 30 minutes of cardio plus an upper body workout on the express machines and some crunches, it was almost 5:30 and there weren't half as many people as at the other location. I'll be back over there tomorrow afternoon. Saturday, I am shooting for a yoga class, and next week I'll start water aerobics and back to bellydance. GO ME! I am not as sore as I expected to be, largely, I believe, due to the salve I bought from Estelril Enterprises. I bought the Chest & Muscle salve at TRF back in October, when I had the beginnings of an upper respiratory infection. I started putting it on my chest immediately, and haven't had a cold that goes into my chest since then. Generally, I have at least 3 chest colds/respiratory infections between October and the end of February. I put the salve on all my sore muscles that I could reach, and they pretty much are fine today. My back's a little achy, but as I'm not double jointed, it didn't get salve on it. Monday night, I slept like a dream, with no artificial assistance, for the first time in I can't remember when. Last night, however, I was so tired I was cross-eyed, yet couldn't get my brain to settle down and go to sleep. I played my electronic solitaire game to no avail. I simply closed my eyes and tried to think happy thoughts, yeah, nothing. Finally, I got out a mandala that I started coloring Monday night before I went to sleep. I guess maybe I find that relaxing somehow, because pretty soon I was cross eyed enough that I couldn't keep them open any longer, put away the pencils & paper, turned out the light and rolled over to sleep. For about 3 hours I did fine, but after that I was just dozing for a couple of more hours until the alarm went off. UGH, hopefully tonite I'll sleep a little better, however, I will be taking an Advil pm in about 5 minutes.

Up & Down

This has been one of those up and down weeks. I used to have them ALL the freaking time, but in the past couple of months, since I've been uterus-free, they've not only gotten less frequent, they seem to have gotten less severe as well. Of course, it may be that they are still as severe as they ever were, but since I am feeling a little more balanced, the little stuff doesn't bother me as much.

On Sunday I got to visit with my sweet little kitty Molly. She lives with my friends Erin & Tony, but has been jointly claimed by another friend and me. She's not squatting or crouching down, she has really short little legs, sort of like me (well, and Erin for that matter). Erin used to breed and sell designer cats, including dwarves, sphynx, bambino, and others. Molly was born deaf, and therefore became a family pet, rather than a breeding cat. As much as I would love to bring her to my house, it just isn't fair to expect her, as a not young cat (I think she's about 5 or 6), to be moved into a strange house with not one, but 2 senior (both over 10 years old) cats that she doesn't know. Our other friend lives in an apartment and can't afford the additional pet deposit either. So we just love her when we are over there. And she loves us! My kids were all over me, trying to identify the white hair all over my red shirt when I got home!

On the down side, I've been frustrated most of the week because I want something that I can't have. At least right now. It's frustrated me off and on for several months, and I've truly learned more patience than I ever thought I had, but for some reason this week has been especially frustrating. There are one or two things that I could do and possibly rectify at least part of the situation, but I'm too big of a chicken to risk losing what I do have in order to POSSIBLY get what I want. Yep, that's me, covered with feathers and squawking bawkbawkbawk bukawk.

On the up side, only 2 weeks until NTIF, the local Irish Festival, which, at least for me, marks the beginning of the festival season. Most of my piping and drumming friends will be there, with their various bands. Some I've not seen since Dickens on the Strand in December, others its been longer, but either way, I'm looking forward to seeing all of them again.

It's also time to start getting busy with my sewing for Scarborough Faire. I've got several pairs of wrap pants to get made, as well as redoing some of my skirts that I made the first year I was making garb. I was going with EASY, at that point, and so not making panel skirts, or circle skirts. Yeah, 5 or 6 yards of fabric at the hemline is great. That same amount up around my waist, notsomuch.

There will also be SOMETHING using this fabric:

Awful isn't it? I think so too, but once a year something totally awful can be funny, and I assure you, once it's done, it's gonna be funny as hell, and I will post the evide-, umm, I mean pictures.

This weekend I'm hoping to get back to doing some cooking, so I can have better food than a frozen pizza for dinner in the evenings. This means I have to clean out the freezers and see what I've got in there to thaw, and what I've got in there that's just plain too freezer burned to salvage... The fridge got cleaned out last night, I need more veggies now. Darn, gonna have to make a trip to Central Market tonite, oh the horrors!

Flashing

Flashing apparently runs in my family. Back in the mid-80’s, I was a freshman in college, and my grandmother, Edie, decided that I needed new bras, and made it her mission to get me some. Yeah, every 18 year old wants to go bra shopping with her (quite persnickety, actually) grandma, doesn’t she? So we head over to Mervyn’s, because that’s where she buys HER bras, and she had decided that I needed the exact same style. We look around the lingerie department and Edie can’t find what she’s looking for, and goes looking for a sales clerk. When she found one, she proceeded to give the poor girl the brand and style name. The poor clerk had no clue what Edie was talking about. So Edie started mind you, not in the actual merchandise area where we might have been at least a little less noticeable, Edie looked at the clerk and said in an exasperated voice “They look like THIS” as she raised her shirt to show the entire store her bra! Never had I ever been quite that embarrassed in all of my 18 years! The now probably traumatized for life by the sight of my 74 year old grandmother’s bra, gave me a funny look. I just shook my head and walked away. When we got home with my newly purchased granny bras, I told my mother I was NEVER going shopping with Edie again! I suspect that I probably did, but she was never allowed to be anywhere near the lingerie department when I was with her! Then there was Thanksgiving. I couldn’t tell you what year it was, other than it was sometime between 1988 & 1991. We were all at my sister’s house. My brother & sister-in-law, Mom, Edie, and my 2 oldest nephews. It was a very small house. I can’t say for sure where my brother & brother-in-law were, or whether they were actually witnesses to the flash or not. I was sitting on the couch, next to Mom, and my sister-in-law was on the other side of her. Edie was sitting in an armchair across the small living room from us. The nephews were on the floor watching tv. Edie started scratching along the bottom of her bustline. She scratched for a minute or two. Still itching, she put her hand under her shirt and scratched some more. When that didn’t ease the itch, she got up from the chair, and came over to the couch, pulled up her shirt, and her bra, and held her boob up as she stood above my mother and said “Honey, is there something under there, it itches terribly?” Mom looked up, and said “No Mother, there’s nothing there.” I’ve no clue how Edie finally stopped the itching, because once we recovered from our shock at having seen what we’d just seen, the 3 of us on the couch dissolved in a fit of giggles. Yeah, Edie was a piece of work, and I wish I’d learned to appreciate her humor before she was gone. My mother was a right, above knee amputee, in 1993. She was also a brittle diabetic. Most of the time, she kept her blood sugar under good control, however it would get out of whack sometimes, usually when she was suffering from some other ailment. For some reason, the hospital, even in ICU, could never manage her diabetes properly. She would have a glucose drip in one arm and an insulin drip in the other. It drove us bonkers, because it probably took her twice as long to heal. At any rate, one afternoon, I went in during visiting hours in ICU, and as I came in the door, she threw the sheet off, and started waving her right leg (yes, the amputated one) back and forth. I tried to cover her back up (as the foot of her bed faced the open door and window out into the command center of the unit), and I asked her what she was doing. She looked at me with this big goofy, drunken grin and said “I’m FLASHIN” Goodness, I had to fight to not laugh at her, but it was just funny to hear my ultra conservative mother, who had not even ever gone on a date after the divorce in 1980, and who had lectured me about not having sex until I was married when I was 19, proudly proclaim that she was flashing! When I asked her about it after she’d gotten home, she asked me if I knew what was going through her head while she was doing it. I told her I had no idea, and she said she was practicing to be a Rockette, and that she was kicking to the song “Let Me Entertain You” from the musical Gypsy. Yeah, Mom was a stitch sometimes!

Finally Getting Around

to posting about my house concert over the weekend. I hosted another show for Marc Gunn over the weekend. Originally, I had about a dozen or so people who were coming. I would have liked to have a few more, just because I wanted to make sure that Marc actually made money, though since it was his 2nd show in the area in a few days, I wasn't totally stressed or anything. A couple of weeks ago, I had 2 back out because they had committed to something before I scheduled the show, which they had thought was on Sunday, and it turned out was on Saturday instead, so I was down to about 10. 3 got sick, which took me down to 7, and then 1 bailed an hour before the show. *sigh* Bless Marc's heart, he played his heart out anyway. It was a good show, if a bit, umm, quiet, which is funny considering that there were 4 women in the audience, and 3 of us definitely are talkers!

I had baked a blackberry wine cake for Lissa's birthday. I was a little unsure about it, and very nearly screwed it up, because I didn't read the directions and put the butter in the cake instead of saving it for the glaze. I baked it in a casserole dish instead of a 9x13 pan because I didn't have a 9x13 platter to put it on, so it took about 35 minutes longer than the directions stated. When I started mixing the glaze (with another stick of butter), it looked TOTALLY funkified! The butter didn't cream at all, it sort of turned into these flakes that were all clumpy. Now the glaze recipe said "To Make Blackberry Wine Glaze: Mix together the confectioner's sugar, 1/2 cup blackberry wine, and the softened butter or margarine. Beat until smooth" Yeah, it never did get smooth, it just looked disgusting, so being the fly by the seat of my pants gal that I am, I decided to make glaze the way I usually do, but substitute the wine for the water. The sugar didn't completely dissolve, but it looked appetizing, and actually, once it went on the cake, you couldn't really see the glaze anyway. In the end, about 1/3 of it got eaten, I saved 2 pieces for specific people who didn't make it, and sent the rest home with Lissa.

On the upside, I made a new friend, Angela, who I've seen perfoming as a Drunken Damsel with Lissa, and dancing at the same studio I do. How cool is that? She's not allowed to dance right now, and I've not danced in months, but am going to try to get back to that this week. We stayed in here talking and giggling after we ran Marc out with our estrogen-fest. I think it was nearly 12:30 when they headed home! Fun times

One of my cats, who, at the last house concert in August was acting all orgasmic over Mike's sandal, was of course thrilled to have a houseful of people to pay attention to her. I think Lissa is her new best friend.