Giving Thanks

Another holiday season has officially arrived. Today's attire included this year's first wearing of the festive holiday attire. I left the headwear at home, but the earrings came out, as did the festive holiday socks. I went over for dinner with some fellow MacGiggles and had some fried turkey and tasty sides, plus chocolate cherry cake, a wee slice of pumpkin cake, and a bit of chocolate chip pie. Of course there was a good bit of giggling and some interesting stories told.
By the time I got home, my cats were unhappy, the dog & pig were more than ready to come back into the house, and the upstairs cats were STARVING! I got everybody fed and settled in for the night, and I am POOPED! (Ok, I THOUGHT they were settled, but it sounds as if Bob, Mollie & Blondie are having a conga line or something upstairs!

On my racing trip back to the old house in the hopes that my camera was still over there, I also located one of the 3 iPod cords that I'd torn up my space looking for last night, so I was also able to re-sync the Christmas playlist back onto it, because, well, it's time to listen to and sing Christmas songs! While I am of the firm opinion that Christmas carols should not be played publicly until Thanksgiving, starting on Thanksgiving Day, I'm blasting them as much as possible, and singing along, usually out of key, loving them! Christmas is generally my favorite time of year, I suspect partially because of the amount of joy that seems to be in the air.

Tomorrow's a busy day with finding a storage building, finishing the unpacking of what is already here, and posting the Christmas stash onto Ebay in hopes of clearing more of the stuff that I've been carrying around out. I absolutely want to have my room put together before I head to Galveston for Dickens next week! Since that's the case, I'm thinkin' it's time for me to head for bed, with Too Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar as my bedtime viewing/listening!

What a shocker…

Last night's bedtime viewing, since I don't yet have the satellite box procured to connect my tv to what's on real television, was Miss Congeniality. I have to fall asleep to something funny and light, or else I dream of being in the middle of whatever drama is playing, and restful sleep is elusive in those situations. I have a timer set to shut the tv off around the time that the movie ends, but haven't figured out how to shut off the DVD player/recorder, so when I turn the tv back on, the DVD is stopped at the end of the episode or on a menu of some sort. When I turned the tv on tonite, the menu is the Special Features menu. One of those features is a "Do You Have What it Takes to Be a Beauty Queen?" quiz, so just for shits & giggles I took it. Several questions I have no idea what I answered because the little circle around the letters didn't show up, however, whatever answer it took was either a. the answer I intended, or b. not different enough from what I intended to really matter in the grand scheme of things. Apparently, I SHOULD be the winner of the crown, because I'm beautiful, have a good outlook on life, AND I'm smart, however I won't win: "because of your brains, you don't need to win, you have other ambitions in life, however because you won't lie, manipulate, or cheat to win, you always lose to the one who will 'accidentally' trip you or hide the shoes that match your evening dress." I would say that's relatively accurate, because I won't cheat, lie, or manipulate people or situations just to win, and honestly, I would rather lose with class and knowing that I did the best I could, than to win because I cheated or caused someone else to lose because of my actions intended to harm their chances. Actually, it's just that standard, and the inability to truly understand how or why anyone else would have any other standard, that has gotten me burned in the past. I just have to work harder on listening to my inner cynic and pay a little more attention to what she tells me.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I'm going to dinner with some of my fellow Clan MacGiggle family members. I understand that there will be FRIED turkey (hopefully without a flaming turkey, which is how the last fried turkey prepared for a meal I ate wound up), some mashed taters, some sweet taters (eww), veggies, and tasty desserts. I'm in charge of dips & chips, so I mixed up some garlic veggie dip using a couple of dip mixes I bought at the last craft show I went to, and some bleu cheese dressing from scratch. I got the recipe from a former co-worker, who got it, as I understand it, from some restaurant in Lake Dallas. He never gave me amounts, other than the block of cream cheese, but these are my best estimation:
1 pkg Cream Cheese (I have also used neufchatel cheese & it's just as yummy)
8-10 oz crumbled Bleu Cheese (the fresher the better)
6 oz buttermilk (if you want it to be dressing instead of dip consistency, add a couple of ounces of buttermilk)
Seasonings are approximate measurements as I tend to shake 'em in rather than measure
2t Garlic POWDER
1 ½ t Onion Powder
1 ½ t Fresh ground Pepper
2 t Basil
Let cream cheese come to room temperature, pour in buttermilk and blend with hand mixer until well mixed, then add Bleu cheese crumbles and seasonings. Beat until well mixed, chill and serve cold
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Blue Cheese dressing. Truthfully, I was about 9 before I even knew that there were salad dressings other than Blue Cheese or Greek. There are several others that I will eat, but my first choice will always be BC!

This week's random weirdness was pretty well nonexistent this week, for some reason, save for the wren or sparrow or something that somehow wound up in the house tonite. I have NO CLUE how it ended up in here, however it did. None of the doors or windows had been open for a couple of hours, which was totally bizarre. I had left my bedroom door open for my cats to have a little time wandering around the house. Leo was immediately on the HUNT when he caught sight of the bird. I managed to chase him around a bit, and catch him on the kitchen counter, put him in the bedroom with his sister, then open both the front and back doors to try and coax the bird out. It finally managed to get to the back door and see the exit, but it was about 20 minutes worth of trying to talk him/her out of the house! When I let the cats back out, apparently there had been some conversation that went something like this:
Leo: Girrrl, there's a bird out there, and I almost had it, but then Mom picked me up off the counter and put me back in here!
Bow: you were on the counter? NO FAIR, she wouldn't even let me sit in the drawer with all the little bottles in it.
Leo: did you not hear what I said? BIRD! Prey, chance to eat some REAL food.
Bow: yeah, yeah, you were ON THE COUNTER!
As soon as I opened the door, Bow was in the kitchen, working out the best path to the counter. As soon as she got up, I told her to get down, and she just stood there looking at me, hollering.
At any rate, that's about all for this Wednesday… Everybody have a great Thanksgiving!

Tuesday again

Every time I post, I swear I'm going to get better at it, but somehow it just doesn't work out that way. It's been a busy week is my only excuse.

The estate sale was NOT what I had hoped, largely, I believe because of my signage (or lack thereof). The sale was in Watauga, who has, frankly, RIDICULOUS rules for their garage sale signs. The permit, which includes 1 sign, WITHOUT a stick to put it in the ground, is $5. Additional signs, which require location addresses & property owner's permission are $2 each, and there is a limit of 4 of those. The permit must be purchased at least 12 hours prior to the sale beginning. So on Wednesday, I trotted on down to the Public Works office to get my permit & whatever I have to fill out to get the additional signs, which I planned to pick up Thursday morning & place. Oh HELL NO, I can't do that. The form for the signatures IS the permit, and everything has to be turned in at once, and since it was the middle of a work day, I was pretty much SOL on the additional signs. Oh, AND there are rules about WHERE on any given property the signs can be placed. On residential property, the sign must be 10 feet from the curb. On commercial property it's 20 feet! Umm, yeah, like any commercial property has something besides a freaking parking lot 20 feet from the curb?! In the end, I sold mostly little stuff, largely at garage sale prices, and had one small item stolen from me. A knife, priced at a quarter, is not in the box of miscellaneous kitchen utensils, and I KNOW it wasn't sold. That's ok, they didn't get the warning that should have gone with it… it's probably 70 years old (or more, it was my grandmother's) and it will slice ANYTHING, and could probably amputate a limb if necessary, so do NOT handle the blade unless you absolutely must! So when they reached into whatever they'd put it into to steal it and cut off a finger, it's not my fault… What's left is going to be sorted in the next few days into "garage sale", "Ebay", "Craigslist", and "try to consign". I suspect that my planned 5x10 storage space isn't going to hold all that needs to go into it.

This morning's task was to get to the Post Office with my Ebay auction items. I've now sold & shipped 11 items, and am working on what I want to put up next. I'm thinking I'll get some posted tomorrow evening, on 5 day auctions, and hopefully get some sold and paid for before I head to Dickens on the Strand. I'm thinking perhaps a batch of Christmas things that didn't sell in the sale, that might generate some interest. And relist the 5 Polonaise ornaments that didn't sell the first time they were listed.

Tonite we played beauty parlor over here, because two of us needed the gray covered up, and another needed a haircut. So now we all have fresh & pretty hair for Thanksgiving, YAY! It's been so long since I had someone to put color on my hair, I'd almost forgotten what it's like to get in the shower after it's been colored and not have to scrub dye off my arms from trying to get the back of my hair done!

I'm off to bed, to sleep, and hopefully remember some of the random weirdness of the last week or so for RWW tomorrow.

Estate Sale

OK the weekend of my estate sale is here! Starting tomorrow morning @ 9am  please pass the word!

*x*x*x*x*x* PHOTOS OF SOME ITEMS*x*x*x*x*x*

*****ESTATE SALE*****

Antique hutch,

Antique tables, various styles/sizes

Nice couch,

Washer & dryer,

Painted drop front desk,

dresser,

chest of drawers

Kitchen items

Noritake china (Arvana, Roseberry designs)

Pictures, frames, albums

Bath & bed linen items

Misc. household items

Old vinyl albums

Various holiday items

Much more

******CASH ONLY******

Thursday-Saturday November 19-21

9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

NO EARLY BIRDS

6905 Declaration St, Watauga, TX 76148

Counting Blessings

Here lately, there has been much that I've been pretty damned pissy and bitchy about.
I have developed a tendency to see the negatives and dwell on those, instead of being grateful for what I do have. 

1. I have a safe, dry and warm place to lay my head, and that place includes space for my kitties.
2. I have amazing friends who love me and come to my aid when I need assistance.
3. I have a church family that has been loving and supportive for my entire adult life.
4. I have an opportunity to grow and try new things.
5. I am generally in good health

Right now it is a struggle for me to acknowledge and count the blessings in my life, but I am going to try. 

A dear friend sent this story to me in an email. I've seen it before, but it's a good reminder for anyone.

An elderly Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life



He said to them,

"A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

One wolf is evil---he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego.


The other is good ---he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. ...



This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too."


They thought about it for a minute, and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win, Grandfather?"

The Elder simply replied, "The one you feed."

I am going to do my best, in this season of giving thanks, and preparing for Christmas, to feed the good one, and not the evil one.

Saturday musings

T-minus 4 days to the sale. UGH, yeah, tomorrow is going to be a mad combination of loading stuff up to get it out of one room in the house, and then trying to get some of the stuff that’s piled up in the dining room and bedroom into that room for the sale. Said stuff was supposed to be picked up last weekend, but the helper with the truck backed out at the last minute. Then it was supposed to happen today, but other circumstances prevented that. Frankly, I am quite tired of my stress levels being increased by other people’s failure to follow through on what they said they would do! In the end, I am probably going to have to spend 2-3 hours tomorrow, and another 5 or 6 on Monday just arranging and getting stuff put out. I’m betting we’ll need to go over on Wednesday sometime to get the few things out of the shed that need to come out before Thursday morning. I am so ready for it to be Saturday, let’s say around 6:30 pm, so I’ll be on my way home, hopefully with minimal stuff that will have to go into the next garage sale, or on Ebay.

When E&T got home this evening, they had in tow a TINYPUPPY. Yeah, she’s 8-10 weeks old, and cute as all get out. Probably a terrier mix. If anybody needs a tiny puppy, who will likely stay pretty small, email me! She’s really sweet. Well, unless you ask Mei Ling, the sharpei/lab mix who is the alpha dog and has bigger feet than tiny puppy actually is. TP does NOT like Mei Ling one bit! We need a tinypuppy like we need a hole in the head. Our menagerie is plenty thankssomuch.

 

 

 

 

And if you've got a spare moment, add my friend Mary E. to your prayer and positive energies list.  She's a week post-surgery for a radical mastectomy on her right side. The good news is that only a couple of the lymph nodes are involved, and the tumor is only Stage 2, so with proper treatment and care, it sounds very treatable, possibly curable.  This isn't her first go-round with the big C, which, I'm sure makes it even scarier, not just for her, but also for her children.  The next few weekends her husband is out of town at TRF working their shoppe http://www.estelril.com/. Hopefully she'll be able to join him perhaps for closing weekend, at least, so they'll be able to celebrate Thanksgiving together.

 

Oh, and another note, on Wednesday my sister is leaving for San Diego to walk in the Komen 3 Day event with some of her friends.  Her page info is here http://www.the3day.org/site/TR/Walk/SanDiegoEvent2009?px=2715758&pg=personal&fr_id=1298

 

And now I think it’s off to bed with me, another long day tomorrow.

Polonaise & other auctions

A couple of weeks ago I put up my first Ebay auctions.  I put up 2 items, and both sold, however one bidder never paid, and 3 days after the auction closed their account, so I've gotten a credit on the final value fee, and it was a free listing to begin with, so I'm not out any money for their idiocy, but it IS kind of annoying.  My other item went in the mail today, all safely wrapped against breakage.
A couple of days ago I posted a bunch more stuff http://tinyurl.com/my1stebays including 11 of the Polonaise 12 Days of Christmas series of glass ornaments.  My mother started the series years ago, a set for her (ultimately me, since I am her only heir), and a set for my sister.  I am not in love with them, and frankly, I think the last time I was even home for Christmas (before last year, when surgery kept me home) was maybe 2000? For the last oh, 6 or 7 years, I have been gone for Thanksgiving, then I'm home for a couple of weekends, then I head back out of town for Christmas, using my vacation days around the holidays, to maximize days off, while minimizing the # of vacation days I have to actually use, and I've been gone for 10-14 days, returning home either new year's eve, or right after New Year's.  The last 2 years, I've also been out of town the weekend after Thanksgiving. There just doesn't seem to be a point to putting up all the decorations when I'm not going to be home to enjoy them. A couple of years ago, my sister had an incident at a party at her house that cost 3 or 4 of her ornaments in the series, and one of those she was never able to locate a replacement for, so I just gave her mine, since I was planning to sell them anyway.
I've also got a small Wedgewood box, dematisse cup & saucer made in Occupied Japan, a Troy Aikman Bobble head doll, a carnival glass bowl, and an English pewter coffee service. Hopefully they will all go well, and I'll have a little more $ in my account soon.  I am going to have to work on my stories for the auctions that I'm going to post in the coming days and weeks, to drum up more interest, etc.

I think I've had all I can stand for the day, so it's about time to hit the bed before my brain goes all 'splodey cuz my head has hurt all day long!

Introducing Random Weirdness Wednesday

Introducing what I'm hoping will become a regular feature, in Random Weirdness Wednesday. I’m sure there will probably be random weirdness on other days, but I’m going to do my best to focus on the weirdness for Wednesdays. I'm taking a page out of Bo & Jim's book, their Weird Ass Wednesdays are the most awesome days to tune into the show!

There’s been a pretty good bit lately, that I haven’t managed to post about yet. Most recently was this evening’s “fashion statement” at the restaurant where I had dinner with the teenager. My current phone takes crummy photos from any kind of distance and doesn’t zoom at all, but hopefully you can see the photo.

The kid has on jeans, a fitted tank top, and a long-sleeved shirt, which may or may not be a sweatshirt on. I know you’re asking yourself how I know what he has on under the long sleeved shirt, aren’t you? I know this because he only put the damned thing on half-way. Yep, apparently, he pulled it over his head, put his left arm in and pulled that side down toward his waist, and that’s all he did. The right side is still sitting on his shoulder, with the sleeve flapping around like some freaky, deflated extra appendage. Before you chime in with “maybe his arm is broken, or he has a shoulder problem” let me say that I saw him move his arm & shoulder freely, and apparently without pain, so I don’t buy that excuse. In the photo he’s outside talking on his phone like he’s some hip, important player or something. I wonder if he realizes how unkempt he actually appears.

Back in September, on the trip to Corpus, there was a good bit of RW, which, I suppose, is to be expected when you are driving through small town Texas.

In one little town, honestly, I don’t remember the name of the town, we drove past this sculpture, in front of a Knights of Columbus hall, and had to turn around and go back to be sure that we had seen what we thought we had seen. Sure enough, yep, a sculpture of what we have dubbed “alien baby fetuses”. Seriously? Who does a giant steel sculpture of FETUSES? It was just creepy!

Further down the road, in Hallettsville, there’s a restaurant called Snowflake Donuts & Chinese Food. Yeah, since I can’t even stand the scent of Chinese food, I’m pretty sure I’m glad they were closed, and we didn’t have to stop.

Spotted around Corpus:

Giant inflatable rhinoceros

Double baskets

On the road to Houston & in Houston

Beaver Nuggets? I think I’m afraid to know

RC car on the roof? Who drives their RC car on the roof??

And finally:

Ruffled panties for the BIG ASS chicks. UMM, yeah, we Fat Bottomed Girls need to add even MORE to our asses to fluff them up a bit!

 
Thanks for stopping by, and c'mon back next week for another installment of Random Weirdness Wednesday!  MWAH!

Starting to settle in

Yeah, I’ve been gone for several days, and I have a (few) reason(s) for that. The main reason has been, THE MOVE. I HATE ABHOR moving. One would think that after all the moves I’ve made, just as an adult (10, excluding going into & back home from dorms in college), I would have this down to a science, right? Never mind the fact that by the time I graduated from high school I had moved 9 times already. Yeah, notsomuch. I am a packrat. I save EVERYDAMNTHING, just in case it might 1. Be important someday, or 2. Be valuable someday. I come by this quite honestly, because my mother did it (and she openly admitted to doing so), and so did my grandmother (though she denied it vehemently). Edie (my grandmother), unlike her daughter & granddaughter, however, was relatively organized about it, and most of what she kept was paperwork. Over the years, we have gotten rid of tax returns and bank statements that were as old as my mother was. I have NO CLUE why Edie felt she had to save those things, they didn’t mean anything to anyone except her, and after 5 years, she really didn’t need to worry about having to provide them to anyone. Mom, on the other hand, bless her heart, had good intentions of being organized with her paperwork, but it just never happened. Her desk was virtually always chaotic, regardless of how many organizers and sorters she had. I suppose that technically there was some organization, which was only understood by her, because usually she could put her hands almost immediately on whatever it was that she was after. Where my paperwork is concerned, I am much the same way, I tend to have piles here and there on my desk, and while most people can’t see any method to the madness 99% of the time I could put my hands on the requested item quickly. Mom’s problem, however, went beyond paperwork to dolls (which, granted, the collection was started for me), cat figurines, angels, Christmas stuff, books, and miscellaneous other tchotchkes. In the 7 years since she died, there have been multiple purges of her stuff. The first was in the weeks after she died, trying to make some sense of her ‘study’. The second came about a year later, when we were getting ready for the estate sale, and to put the house on the market. That one was pretty big, and a whole crew of folks (mostly friends of my sister & b-i-l) came over to help get junk out and CLEAN. The following January came the 3rd, when the house had been sold, and I was moving into a tiny apartment, and small storage building. A little over a year later came the 4th, when I moved from that apartment into a small house with it’s own storage building. The 5th came last spring, when I moved into the house I’m moving out of now. Mission Arlington came and picked up about a half a roomful of miscellaneous stuff, and I tossed even more. Now that I’m moving from a house to essentially a bedroom, it was time for a MAJOR purge. Last weekend my sister & b-i-l came over and we emptied the shed… filled 2 big rolling garbage cans with misc. paper crapola and other stuff that was not worth trying to sell because of damage, or worthless, or whatever. On Tuesday afternoon, Charter rang my doorbell. Now, I’d been up to the Charter office and talked to them the week before, told them I was moving and that my contract needed to be cancelled effective on Wednesday, and that I wasn’t transferring because I was moving to someone else’s house and I wasn’t allowed to have Charter (true), and that I would bring my digital box & remote by on Wednesday afternoon. They said that was fine. The guy at the door said I needed to either pay him the entire bill, or turn in my equipment. WTF? I told him that the service was supposed to be cancelled the next day, and he told me that regardless of what the agreement I had with the office was, I needed to hand over the equipment & he was disconnecting the service unless I forked over the $. (He was in the Charter truck, uniform, and had paperwork, so I feel certain he was on the up&up. I’ve got my receipt, just in case, showing that I turned in the equipment). That’s another part of the reason I’ve not been around, my service got shut off a day early. (BASTARDS)
Wednesday morning we loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly Weatherford (on a hill, actually). That move entailed my bed and most of the bedroom furniture, along with clothes and a handful of boxes. I did manage to get everything put away, except the clothes that are in totes and the big suitcase in the closet still, but I have enough out to get my through a couple of weeks if necessary. On Friday I went back over and had another friend helping me get some of the kitchen stuff sorted into sell or store, packing up some of the Snowbabies, and emptying the freezer before the fridge move the next day. (By the way, a Snowbaby has gone MIA, and I’m not happy about it. I realized today, however that perhaps it’s Karma or something, as it was called I Have Lots to Give, which I have always been able to say, but now, I really can’t. There was an initial idea that we could, for the time being, do a whole ghetto internet hookup, and run the wire down part of the stairs from the modem, and across the ceiling in the hall, then drop it down into my room. Yeah, that didn’t work out because the modem is not a router too, it is ONLY a modem, and her desktop doesn’t have a second ethernet connection. Now, I was welcome to use her computer (which is in her bedroom) if one of them wasn’t on it, or in the bedroom for something that they needed/wanted privacy for. A fine and generous offer. The biggest problems there are 1. I intrude on their space, and 2. My ass is just about 2 inches too wide for that chair to be comfortable. Yesterday we went and did more sorting, dumped about 4 bags of misc crapola trash, and boxed up about 10 boxes to come over here. Those need to be unpacked over the next couple of days until I’m planning to go back to the house on Wednesday to do some more fine sorting and pick up a another load. The estate sale is being put off until the 19th, 20th & 21st, because I just physically can’t have everything ready before then. My goal is to have the sorting and packing DONE by Thursday, so that on Saturday, we can arrange the sale stuff and get to pricing things. In other news, I DO have a trip planned, to Galveston, the first weekend in December for Dickens on the Strand. This will be my 3rd trip, and I’m excited to see the differences from immediately post-Ike last year to the state of recovery now. My Rogues will be performing, and with all the awful I’ve been dealing with lately, I’m so very glad to have something to look forward to! I’m staying home with animal-sitting duty for Thanksgiving, and that will be fine, because, well, did I mention the bagpipes at Dickens?? I think that’s about it for tonite, my drugs have kicked in and this is about to become a redonkulously silly & non-sensical post!