Witty Title Here

I wish I could tell you that this was going to be an exciting or witty post, but, in all fairness, it's probably not.
Today would have been my kid brother's 41^st birthday, had he made better choices 22 years ago AND survived the military action that was going on at the time, since he was a United States Marine. This fact is not particularly relevant to anything else I have to say today, it's just a little tidbit I thought I'd toss out there. 

In the last couple of weeks since my last post, I've been working on getting paperwork together for a couple of things.

1. SNAP (AKA Food stamps)—I've been approved, pending paperwork processing, which, really, I've turned in already, and am now just waiting to get notified that the money has been put onto my card. I can only purchase non-taxable food items, which is fine with me. Since I have been a responsible person and not had any children that I cannot afford to support, I am limited to 3 months of assistance every 3 years unless I am working at least 30 hours a week, earning minimum wage or more. The problem I have with this plan is that if I had a job, even at minimum wage, I would not so desperately need the assistance! The past twenty-odd years that I have been working and paying taxes which support this very program that will provide seemingly unlimited assistance to women who prefer to keep having children that they cannot feed mean nothing when I am the one needing assistance, apparently.
2. Workforce Investment Act—I have been approved to get into the program, and I had to apply for a Pell Grant, even though there is funding available from the state to pay for my schooling. I was denied the Pell, because, well, I have a Bachelor's Degree, which, after spending $25K of loan money, plus 4 years worth of Pell Grant, is not actually worth the paper upon which it is printed. I've left a couple of messages for the coordinator of the program at the Workforce Center, and expect to hear back from her tomorrow.

I have resigned myself to living with a catbox on a table at the end of the bed, since it will save my mattress, as well as wear and tear on the sheets and mattress protector. My body is adjusting to sleeping on plastic tablecloths between the mattress & mattress pad (yes, I'll take all the defense I can get against cat pee on my 2 year old, $900 mattress!).
I've been working on my faire calendar, and hoping that I'll have managed to come up with some money to spend, at least for admission, at said faires. First up is Middlefaire, which will likely be the first weekend of October. It's sort of become a tradition for some of us who have birthdays that first week to celebrate at Middlefaire that weekend. The following weekend I'm hoping to be able to make it down to TRF for their opening weekend with friends that are planning to go then. It seems that as long as I'm living here at Castle Wford, sharing responsibility for HoBBiTcaTs & WaveorgoNaked,Sphynx either I can be gone, or the roomies can be gone, but we can't all be gone a full weekend at the same time. I'm planning to make Dickens on The Strand again this year, which makes missing the 3 day weekend at TRF easier to bear, cuz I really don't need to be gone two weekends in a row, and the roomies will be in Corpus for Thanksgiving, so I'm staying closer to home. I hear that there are a couple of Pirate invasions planned at a local garden area, but don't have dates on those yet.
I'm also brainstorming ideas to make this space a little more interesting (thus drawing more readers and hopefully ultimately some advertising revenue), as well as helping to give me a goal to meet each week… maybe a photo of the day, recipe, quote, or something, I just haven't figured out what I really want to do, other than aimless rambling. Any ideas would be most appreciated!
 

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!

Company

This afternoon my friend Victoria & her friend Andrea came in for Tribal Alchemy this weekend. They got here about 4:30ish, and needed caffeine, so off we went to Starbucks, then over to Sam Moon, because my most favorite shades, also a Sam Moon purchase, broke yesterday, and I'm unhappy about this, because I loved my Pirate shades. Vicki had never been to Sam Moon, and we spent an hour, easily, in the store, looking at various stuff before we went next door to the Sam Moon Luggage store to find me some shades. Of course the ones I had are no longer available, but I did find some other cool ones that I'll get pics of one of these days. Eventually I'll get photos added of the other funny shit I found in there, including the flask I NEED which says "Old enough to know better, young enough not to give a rat's ass" Once we finished, in there, we headed back toward the Stockyards to hit Byblos for dinner. They have an awesome buffet, and I tend to forget about them, mostly because I rarely get over to that part of town. I also forget how much I like a really good, GENUINE Feta. And by genuine, I mean made from goat and/or sheep's milk, not cow's milk. Yeah, I could have stuffed myself on just that, thankyouverymuch. In the end, I had a bit of vermicelli rice, a bit of beef, a chunk of the kebabed chicken, and a wonderful pita to go with my Feta. And just a note, unless you like a good dose of VERY rich chocolate, you'll want to limit your Baklava choice to not the chocolate. It was tasty, but, as much as I LOVE chocolate, I couldn't eat more than one bite. The plain was AWESOME though. My house is still a wreck, well, parts of it are a mess, but that's life. Tomorrow morning we're going to hit British Emporium and see what trouble we can get into before they head for Ft. Worth and I head for Sheffield, and ultimately on to Ft. Stockton for the sesquicentennial. It's late, and I'd better get off here and get some sleep with the driving I've got in store for me tomorrow.

Friday's adventure.

Ok, yeah, I should have written a little each night, but since I was offline all weekend, it wouldn’t have gotten posted anyway, so here we go. Friday I left for the airport around 2-ish, because I had a couple of stops I needed to make on my way over. First stop was this great little shoe store because Dawn, whose blog I follow, convinced me that I NEED a pair of these THAT DAY. Unfortunately since my EU shoe size is like 37/38, and not 41 or bigger (that’s 10-10.5 US), yeah, I was SOL. I did, however go ahead and buy a pair that are not limited edition or with a really cool print. Second stop was at Chase to make my car payment. Now, my November payment was about 2 weeks late, but my December payment was like 3 weeks early. I had 2 checks written. Each had my loan number on them, and either November or December payment written on them, along with “apply overage to principal”. They were not in the same amount, because I’m paying some extra in an effort to pay it off sooner. So the drive thru teller gets them, and I guess does some weird voodoo ritual with them for 8 minutes or so before the following conversation ensues: Her: “ma’am, are these payments?” Me: “yes, my account number is on there, in the memo section.” Her: “ok, and you want to apply the overage to the principal?” Me: *SIGH* “yes.” Her: “ok, how much is the overage?” (clearly it was too hard for the BANK employee to look in her handydandy computer and see how much my payment is supposed to be, then deduct that from the amount of the check and apply the difference to the principal) Me: “I don’t know, because I haven’t gotten this month’s bill in the mail, and I don’t have last month’s with me.” (Ok, since they are idiots and usually apply at least part of the overage to the NEXT PAYMENT DUE, instead of to the principal, my payment amounts change my several dollars every month) Her: “Well, I’m going to send you out a form to fill out with the amounts and then I can apply it properly.” WTF??? I’ve just told you I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH IS OVERAGE! UGH! In the end, I estimated , based on what I think was roughly the payment due on the last bill I saw (November’s), how much my payment was and how much was overage for each check. Next stop, Love Field, for my 5:30 flight to Hobby Airport. I get all checked in, like an hour and a half early, in the hopes of getting on an earlier flight as stand-by. Yeah, the upgrade to full fare for the 1 flight cost almost what my round-trip ticket cost when I bought it over a month ago! AND then my flight was delayed. *sigh* We were scheduled to depart at 5:30, and at 5:32 the inbound flight on our plane pulled up to the gate to unload. I think we finally took off right about 6:47. The flight was uneventful, and we made it to Houston, at which point I realized that I’d left my full itinerary at home, so I had to go get in line in order to get a copy of it from an agent. I had to have a copy of it to rent my car. I got to the rental car location, got processed, and by now it’s close to 8, and I was supposed to be in Galveston, at the restaurant for dinner at 7:30. I’m walking out the door with the guy, who says to me “you’ve reserved an economy, what would you like to drive today?” I looked at him and said, “you know, NOTHING has gone right since I left work this afternoon, I should have been in Galveston ½ hour ago, and I don’t much care what I’m driving, so long as I’m driving SOMETHING.” God bless him, he looked at me, and the cars that were available and said “how about a free upgrade to this Nissan Rogue?” Well, now, I may do some crazy things, and I may be weird, but I’m not an idiot, so of course I took him up on the free upgrade. Brand new car, had like 241 miles on it when I hit the road. OMG, if I was in the market for a new car, I would SO look at one! It is spacious inside, more in the passenger area than my Escape is, though you give up a little of the cargo space. It drives beautifully, and virtually no road noise as I was pushing 80 mph to get to Galveston before dinner was done! In the end, I’d had them order for me, and I walked in literally seconds after they put my plate on the table! I was quite definitely ready to be in for the night by the time we got to the house a little after 9! I’ll eventually get photos uploaded and included in the post, but for now, I’ll stop blathering one and actually do a little work.

FINALLY

I’m in a good place, I think, finally. The last few weeks have been dramatic and trying for me, and I’ve been rather a whiny brat, I know. And those of you who have put up with my whiny, ranting, frustrated or just plain down in the dumps texts, bulletins, blogs, and tweets, I love you and thank you for your patience with me. I know I’ve been hard to live with for awhile. Maybe it’s that the 341 Christmas songs on my Ipod have finally penetrated my brain. Maybe it’s that I see the light at the end of the tunnel to being uterus free. 11 days for those of you who are counting. Maybe it’s that I’ve come to a better understanding with someone who has frankly confounded me for the last couple of months. Maybe it’s a combination of those things. I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t really care, I’m just glad that the happy pills are kicking in and I’m not so crabby all the time anymore. In about an hour, I’m leaving the office to run by the bank before I head to the airport for my weekend in Galveston. Last year, the first time I went to Dickens on the Strand, I loved it. There were several shops that I didn’t make it into, and I’m hoping that they are not among the ones that have elected not to return after Ike. I had a grand plan to get together a whole Victorian outfit for this weekend, but alas, life intervened, and I didn’t get it done. Perhaps next year I will be healthier, and thus feel better and be better able to get my shit together. Yeah, don’t hold your breath for that, I’ve been saying it for years. I’ve done a lot of traveling this fall, and I can honestly say that this is only the 2nd trip that I’ve truly been looking forward to. Sure, I was looking forward to the others, but most of them, by the time they came around, I was not as enthusiastic as I had been, and would almost (and in a couple of cases definitely) rather have stayed home. That is not to say that any of my trips were a waste, they were all a learning experience of one sort or another, and they afforded me the opportunity to spend time with people that I enjoy, and only get to see once or twice a year. This is my last trip for the year, and quite frankly, I think it’s high time I stopped for awhile. Among all the faires and festivals I’ve been to, I’ve been at faire/fest a total of 16 weekends, traveling for other Celtic events 2 or 3 weekends, family related travel 2 weekends, plus I moved in March and early April, I don’t think I’ve been that busy in YEARS! I’m TIRED, and am going to take advantage of the time off after surgery to try to finish getting my house in order, and do some real relaxing. Back to the Christmas music… I LOVE Christmas music, and this year, one of my purchases was the Tartan Terrors’ Christmas album. Carol of the Bells has always been one of my favorites, and as much as I love the bagpipes, I never thought about having a version of that tune done on bagpipes. Yep, I love it. What’s not to love, it’s bagpipes, right? J I should create links in this post, but you know what? Right now I’m not gonna, because I’ve got a couple of other things to do before I leave, but I’ll probably get back into it and create them later. Have a great weekend, I know I will!

thanksgiving sucked

/28/08 This has quite possibly been the worst Thanksgiving I’ve ever had. I am finding that I have less and less patience for people in general. I drove 6 hours to come to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere to spend a few days with 3 of my very favorite people. I knew going into the trip that I was going to have to suffer the presence of 2 of my very least favorite people. Darla is my very best friend ever, and honestly I would do anything in the world for her, however I think I have found the one thing that I won’t do. I can deal with her snotty, bitchy sister and her smarmy brat niece, or I can deal with her drunken asshole boyfriend, but I have found that I cannot deal with them all at the same time. I have spent the better part of the last 41 hours either drunk, or crabby, or both. Neither of those 2 adults has reached the conclusion that there are other people in this house who have an opinion, or feelings. Lisa has spent most of the time I’ve been here telling Darla how to parent Nick, because, well, since Darla has managed to raise Nathan to the ripe old age of 17, he’s not been in trouble with the law, he’s doing fine, for the most part in school, and in general he’s a well-adjusted kid, clearly Darla’s an incompetent parent! Rick, on the other hand, has spent most of the time I’ve been here completely drunk and in general being an asshole to everybody except the baby. Last night, once the baby was asleep, the bratchild was also asleep, Nathan had gone to his room, and I laid down on my bed (the couch) in the living room to try to go to sleep. Rick and Lisa decided that they were going to stay up and watch the end of US Marshals or whatever the damn movie was. I plugged in my IPOd and tried to ignore them and go to sleep. Yeah, notsomuch. Asshole decided that he couldn’t hear the movie well enough, so turned up the volume, now that the baby was asleep in his room. I tried to ignore them as best I could until the movie ended. Silly me, I thought that I would actually get to go to sleep. Lisa headed to bed, but oh no, not asshole. He turned on a light, dug around in the cabinet and got out yet another movie to watch! I asked him if he was going to watch movies all night and his response was “oh, just for a little bit.” I got up and started into his bedroom to get in bed with Darla and he acted all offended, but I just told him “I can’t sleep with that TV on. I’ll go in there and sleep in your bed, you can stay up and watch tv all you want.” I eventually fell asleep, about 12:15 in the morning, in there with Darla. All was fine until 4:30 when he decided that he was ready to get in bed, at which point he came and tried to rouse me out of my spot. Darla told him to leave me be, so he slammed outta the bedroom and came out to the couch. I’m ok with it. Fucker. I got up around 7 to get up and hopefully get to spend a little time texting with Tom before he had to go to work, and sent Rick into his bed. I had about an hour of peace before Lisa & bratchild woke up and came out. While I was in the shower, Rick found it amusing and appropriate to try to gawk at me through the shower door, and bang on it. WTF??? He wasn’t even drunk yet… I think he was on his 2nd beer of the day. In all reality, if not for the fact that I will be unable to travel at Christmas, thus unable to do what I have done for nigh on 10 years now, which is spend Christmas with Darla & Nathan, I would not be here at all. I would have stayed home, gotten a few things done around the house, and started getting ready for Christmas. Unfortunately, next year, it will be Lisa’s year to have the bratchild at Christmas, so they’ll be back here again, which means I will NOT spend Christmas with Darla & Nathan for 2 years in a row. Sigh. I want so desperately to talk to someone specific, but even if he was not at work, I am not sure I could talk to him without being completely negative and bawling my eyes out, and I just don’t want to subject him to that. He doesn’t deserve my ranting and whining, because he brings a smile to my face and light to my world, and I hope that I do the same for him, at least sometimes. Eventually I think we’ll reach the point that I feel comfortable telling him what all is going through my head and fussing and crying my little eyeballs out when I’m overwhelmed, but I’m not sure he’s ready to deal with that right now. Saturday, November 29th dawned and Lisa & bratchild finally left. Soon after that, Darla & I headed for the big city. In that part of the state, that means Midland/Odessa… big woo, right? Well, our first stop was The Candle Café in Midland. It’s absolutely my favorite candle shop. More on that later, when I can gather my thoughts for a more positive, less rant-filled post. One of Darla’s other friends met us at the Candle Café. This is a person that I was never terribly crazy about, but in the last couple of years, she’s made some choices that cause me to want nothing to do with her. At any rate, I knew we were going to have to meet up with her, as she had some things to give to Darla for Christmas, but I told Darla to begin with, I do NOT want to spend the whole day with her. It’s bad enough that we get less than 24 hours of time for just us (except for dipshit rick and the boys). So we were driving into Midland, and we passed a street on the outskirts and she said “her aunt lives down that road”. Now, see, I was willing to begin with to meet up with this chick because I thought she lived in Abilene and was only in town for the holiday weekend. But HELL NO, she fricking LIVES THERE. She lives less than 2 hours from Darla, yet the only time that she can find to see Darla is when I have driven 6 hours to see her. WTF???? So as we were leaving, Darla retrieved her things from the chick’s car and the chick said she would follow us to the Christmas bazaar that we were planning on hitting next. As Darla got in the car I said (probably rather loudly, and honestly, believing that chick was in her own car already) “Oh HELL NO, I am not spending all day with her, how long is she planning on following us around? I did not drive 6 hours and 400 miles plus another 120 today to put up with her bullshit today!” Chick pulled out of her parking space before we did, but not angrily as far as I could tell. Darla said we’ll just tell her we’re heading back home after the bazaar. When we got to the bazaar, she wasn’t there yet, which surprised us, but in all honesty, I didn’t care, since I really didn’t want to be with her anyway. She arrived a few minutes later and we set about wandering around. As is our nature, we wind up being in different booths at the same time, but we always manage to hook back up every few minutes. I hadn’t seen her in about 30 minutes, and it had been about 15 since I’d seen Darla, but I did find Darla again and was at a booth with her looking at hair stuff, when chick came up with her bags acting all pissy, and told Darla she was leaving. Darla asked her if there was something wrong and she said no, that she just needed to go home. Off and on throughout the rest of the day Darla fretted about why she left early, if Darla had done something to hurt her feelings or piss her off. I tried to get her to not worry about it, I suspect that perhaps she heard my rant about not wanting to spend the whole day with her, and I don’t rightly give a damn. In the last 6 years, I have NEVER been able to have a visit out there with Darla without her horning in on something, on at least 1 day of my visit. She’s self absorbed, and always has an agenda. When Darla had Nick, she was Darla’s coach in labor & delivery, and she stayed with Darla when she went home from the hospital until I got there. Darla’s choice was to breast feed, and Darla was open about this, though because of some delivery complications, her milk didn’t come in very quickly, and so Nick had to be started on formula. Until I was there and I was able to have a say so and support Darla, chick was doing everything she could to hinder breast feeding. Again, I say WTF??? She was totally unhelpful about making sure the pump was nearby and as soon as he started fussing, instead of handing him to Darla (who wasn’t allowed to lift anything over about 3 lbs, and had to be off her feet except to go to the bathroom for a week after he was born), she carried him into the kitchen with her while she fixed a formula bottle. Yep, she is just one more person in Darla’s world who wants everything her way, hence I don’t want to deal with her if possible. After the Christmas bazaar (which was fun, but that will all go into a nicer post as well), we headed back to Midland to hit the mall, since I THOUGHT that’s where the nearest Lane Bryant was. Talk about a fustercluck mess! The first entrance/exit that we came to was closed off, so it took 20 minutes to get into the stupid parking lot. Yeah, no Lane Bryant. Picked up a few things at Bath & Body Works as long as we were there, then hit Victoria’s Secret to see if they had the sweats Darla wanted. By the time that we got to Academy to pick up what pinhead had sent $ for, and got to Walmart, it was 5:30. We made our rounds and got everything that was on our written list. I had forgotten to write one thing down, but it wasn’t anything major. By 6:15, I was over it and burnt to the ground, so we went to find an open checkout lane. UMM, you know those commercials now, about opening more checkout lanes on Saturdays? I think they forgot to get that information to the Walmart in Midland, right there on I20. I swear to you, there were 8 self-checkouts, 3 express lanes (20 items or less), and 1, yes, I said ONE regular checkout open. uMM, yeah, a total of 12 out of I think 36 or 40 lanes were open. Helpful, since I needed to reload a gift card, and we had about 30 items. I just gave up on the reload, and we did the self checkout, after which we noticed as we walked out, that 2 more regular lanes had been opened. GRRRRR! We rolled into the driveway about 8:45 or so to find that we had company, one of butthead’s co-workers. No idea how long she’d been there, but of course butthead was drunk, the baby wasn’t bathed or ready for bed, AND as I discovered when I heated up some potato casserole and got some carrots for MY dinner, NOT FRICKING FED YET! Therefore, instead of eating my potatoes, I had to feed them to the baby. The company left around 10:30, and the baby was bathed by then. When Darla tried to settle Nick down to sleep, butthead had to keep trying to “help” however in his drunken state, and because he will tell him “you don’t have to go to sleep, but you have to sit here with me and watch tv” the baby thinks he’s going to be rescued and not have to go to sleep yet. I think finally around 11:30 butthead went to bed, and within about 10 minutes, Nick was out for the count. So, finally, it’s nearly midnight, and there’s now way in HELL I am going to try to get the itunes stuff transferred from my computer to Darla & nathan’s so she can sync when she wants to update it. I also discovered that asshole had opened and drunk half of each of my last 2 Dublin Dr Peppers. OK, now screwing me out of my Dr P is a killing offense in my book. And this pinhead has opened not ONE, but TWO, and drunk the sum total of 1 of them, leaving the halves to go flat. Not that I would drink out of anything I know he’s drunk out of, since he’s got a wad of chew in his mouth most of the time, so God knows what his drunk ass left in the cans after taking a swig! Sunday morning I was hoping to be on the road by 10 a.m., but that didn’t happen because I had to do the whole itunes transfer thing, and even then, it didn’t transfer into her Itunes, it just went to her music folder. So I left Nathan in charge of making sure that everything got into the proper place, as well as recreating the playlists, but I was hysterical before I gave him the task! OH, and Lisa called to see if I would go to the Cracker Barrel in Abilene and pick up the baby doll that bratchild left the day before when they stopped for lunch. Um, yeah, that is a great big NO! Especially since I didn’t plan on going through Abilene! I wound up leaving about 11:30. Stopped in Ozona at the DQ to get a DP and some lunch. Yeah, I’d filled my cup with some on my way out the door, not realizing that dipshit had given the company something to drink in it the night before, and left fricking LIMES in the bottom. I HATE LIMES! Yep, we’re up to 3 wasted dr p’s now, 2 from Dublin at a cost of about $1.25 each, plus a regular one. So, I place my order “Hunger Buster with cheese with KETCHUP AND PICKLES ONLY, and a large dr pepper. “ she repeated it back to me, correctly, gave me my total, and I pulled up. I got my drink and about 3 minutes later they told me to pull forward and wait. Sigh, so I did, and about 5 minutes later, here came my food. Go back 2 sentences and see what I said. Go on, I’ll wait. Yep, clear as day I said KETCHUP & PICKLES ONLY. My burger came out “sub ketchup for mustard” WTF??? It’s a good thing that my aversion to onions and tomato slices has to do with flavor/texture, and not an allergy, because hot damn, there they were, nestled in among the shredded lettuce. As frustrated as it made me, it just wasn’t worth the bullshit of waiting in line behind the million cars parked, or the 7 in the drive through to raise hell about it. I only made 1 stop after that, in San Angelo for gasoline and a potty break. It took me a total of about 6 hours from door to door, including the 2 stops, so I made pretty good time. When I got home, the house was pretty much in the same state I’d left it in, which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t a huge deal, but since I’d been hearing for a couple of weeks that Helen’s plan was to do some cleaning while I was gone. Oh well.

What a fabulous weekend I had. Sunday morning I got up and caught a plane out to Midland, TX and then drove about 45 minutes to Big Spring for a Saint Andrews’ celebration at a friend’s church. The big draw for me was the presence of Randy Wothke, EJ Jones, and Richard Kean at the celebration. This is the second year that I’ve gone to Big Spring for the celebration. It’s nice to be able to have a little time with them without huge crowds, and in a setting other than faire, a festival, or a pub. Since I woke up at 4:21 Sunday morning and didn’t get back to bed until around 11:30, it was a very long day for me, and the alarm going off at 5 Monday morning so I could catch my 7:30 flight back to Dallas did not make for a restful night, that’s for sure! Tomorrow I head for a tiny little town in west TX to spend Thanksgiving with Darla, Rick and the boys. I have the car packed, save for the ice chest, which I won’t pack until in the morning, when I’ll fill it with the stuff I’ve prepared for us to eat over the next few days. I try to ensure that I don’t create any extra work or expense for them while I am there, so I’ve pre-cooked a couple of turkey breasts and several turkey legs (our traditional holiday eats, because it’s easier not to have to deal with the whole turkey and carcass), a couple of pans of potato casserole, a couple of meat loaves, a big batch of soup, and another casserole, that are all frozen and ready to be heated. It is probably more than we will eat while I am there, but whatever is left can stay in the freezer and will be there sometime when Darla comes home from a 15 hour day at work and doesn’t want to think about dinner. It’s a 6 hour drive from southwest Fort Worth, according to the mapping programs, so from work it’s about 7 hours. The good news is, I’m stopping for lunch in FW, so I can spend a few minutes with a special someone before we can't see each other for a week. That will give me a short break before I am back on the road for awhile. The only drawback to the weekend is that Darla’s sister and niece are coming out as well. Nobody invited them, they just decided that they were coming. We do ok, with small doses of them, but prefer those doses to be less than 24 hours. L is just an annoying, know-it-all, pushy, bossy, I-have-class-but-none-of-you-even-know-what-it-is, well, BITCH. K, the niece, is about 7 or 8, I think, and VERY bright, however she’s a spoiled heathen brat. She LOVES to start shit with Nathan and when he tries to defend himself, she cries that he started it or hurt her. She truly believes that the sun rises and sets on her, and her mother lets her do pretty much whatever the hell she wants to do. She is allergic to more things than I can begin to remember or name, including dogs (there are 2 that live INSIDE Darla’s house). They tend to come with 2 air purifiers just for the tiny room she sleeps in, food that nobody is allowed to touch because it’s prepared specifically with her allergies in mind, and in general, a “we are the princesses, you will bow to us and let us have our way” attitude. Now, last week, L called Darla and said “I have a 12 lb turkey that I’m bringing.” Darla told her that we don’t cook a whole turkey, we do the boneless, skinless breasts and a couple of legs for Rick & Nathan, and that I have that covered already, as well as the potato casserole and a few other things. Now, they were there for Christmas last year, so L is experienced with the potato casserole, and knows what it is, and ate plenty of it herself, thankyouverymuch. Well, she called Darla yesterday and announced that not only is she bringing the fucking turkey, she’s bringing mashed potatos, stuffing and god knows what else. HELLO???!!!! What part of WE DON’T DO A WHOLE TURKEY was she not clear on? What part of potato casserole was she not clear on???? The good news is that Darla & Rick have 2 deep freezers, in addition to the freezer that’s on top of the fridge, so there’s plenty of space to put the leftovers. It is my plan to stay pretty well pickled as long as she’s around, because I deal much better with her when I’m drunk and just don’t give a damn! Yep, there’s 2 boxes of booze in the car, and if things were different, I would be there before she was and could have a good buzz going before she arrives, but alas, I can’t leave until 10, and she’ll be long gone by then, I’m sure, so I’ll just have to take a good strong shot of something when I pull up in the driveway!

Craziness coming

I just looked at my calendar again, and holy cow, the next couple of weeks are CRAZINESS! Sunday my sister & I are going to the Tut exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. I missed the last time there was a Tut exhibit in Dallas. It’s one of those things that we would have done with Mom, if she was still with us, she was a HUGE Egyptology fan. Next Sunday, I’m flying out to Midland to celebrate Saint Andrew’s Day at a friend’s church. Why, you ask would I fly to Midland for that??? Because the ever fabulous EJ Jones, & Richard Kean will be piping, with the awesome Randy Wothke drumming. Yeah, I’ll fly to Midland for my Rogues fix! Even if they aren’t all Rogues anymore. I’ll fly out Sunday morning and then fly home on Monday morning before I go to work. Fortunately, work is close to the airport, so I can be to work by like 9:30. Between now and then I have a ton of food prep to do. I’m taking a handful of turkey legs, a couple of boneless, skinless turkey breasts, some meatloaf, a batch of soup and a couple of casseroles. Fortunately, much of it can be prepared in advance and frozen until we are ready to actually cook it, and with disposable foil pans, cleanup will be easy too!!! I’ll head out to the sticks on Wednesday, hopefully around 11 a.m. I’ll be on the road, which should get me there by about 6 p.m. Hopefully, the other company that’s coming in from this area will be a little later than I am, so we can get situated before there are too many people in the house. And have a conference or two with the Captain. Come December, I’ll be heading to Galveston for Dickens’ on the Strand. Yep, Galveston is still in recovery from Ike, and the Strand may not be as pretty as it has been in former years, but hopefully there will be an outstanding turnout for the celebration. I know that several of the acts are performing at no cost to the festival, which is awesome of them to do, so if you’re headed that way, be sure to leave something in the tip jar for them, k? I think that’s about it for tonite.

ok so I'm not so good

Ok, so yeah, I suck at this blogging thing sometimes. The last month has brought a lot of activity. The beginning of August, I hosted a house concert for Marc Gunn’s latest cat CD. Big fun for about a dozen folks. I think the cats had a good time too. Princess Rhonda sprawled where everyone could see her, but wouldn’t try to touch her. Leo hid, as it is his firm belief that everyone was here to get him. Bowbits, little attention whore that she is, just wandered about the room from person to person, collecting all the rubs and scratches she could. The weekend after that, I acquired a roommate when a friend moved back to TX and needs a place to get back on her feet. The last time I lived with anyone other than my mother was 1986. Fortunately there’s enough space in the house for both of us. We are still adjusting, but we’ll get there. Last weekend, I had my first public bellydance performance. Happily, I didn’t have any problems, other than a small last minute change to my costume in order to cover up my backpiece and not be breaking the ‘no visible tattoos’ rule that our studio has. My sister, roommate, cousins, and a couple of friends made it out to watch me, which was cool. This past week was crazy busy. On Monday night, my very best friend, Darla, and her 2 boys came in for a couple of days before going on to see her stepmother. 3 adults, a 17 year old, and a 20 month old make for a full house!!! Tuesday night Darla & I got a wee bit toasted. Note to self, Bunratty’s Meade is AWESOME, but dayum it will kick your ass!!!! We had to go shopping for school clothes on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then Thursday they headed east to the next stop, which was supposed to be a 2 night stay near her stepmother. Turns out that she was lied to about accommodations, and therefore needed to get a motel room, at $75/night. Between not being able to afford more than one night, and the fact that the women she was visiting chain smokes despite her COPD, emphysema, and 24/7 oxygen tank, which made Darla & our big boy sick, it was a 1 night stay and they were back here by Friday night 11:30. This next week will be a busy one as well, since I’ve still got to pack for PARF next weekend!!!! Coming, hopefully in the next few days, a handful of reviews on the CD’s I’ve gotten lately…. Teribus, Killdares, Rathkeltair, Marc Gunn…..