exercise

Angel #2 and I oh so nobly went to the gym today. We did our little orientation session with the trainer, then headed for the machines. I broke a sweat, people. What kind of sadist invented those elliptical machines anyway? We also inspected the pool and got a list of the different classes they offer. We're going to try a few out and see what happens.

I did so good today. As a rule, I don't strike up conversations with random strangers beyond the 'can you believe the price of milk?' sort of thing. Today there was a woman at Kmart who was shopping with her obviously mentally handicapped daughter. Tomorrow we're having a big Special Olympics event and I wanted to invite the woman and her family to it. Of course, this is rather risky - everyone knows someone who LOOKS mentally handicapped but isn't, and it would be rather awkward to invite someone to the picnic then have them give you this look like, why are you inviting ME to a Special Olympics event? But, I figured I was pretty safe with this woman. She seemed only mildly interested, but told me that there was another woman in the store who had a little girl with Down Syndrome who'd come up to her earlier asking about local programs. Woman #1 must have run into woman #2 a little later and told her about me, because this woman came up to me later with her adorable little girl and started asking me questions. I invited her and her family to the picnic tomorrow and it sounds like she'll be coming. How cool is that? And it was all because I finally got brave enough to strike up a conversation.

we're now complete

You may have noticed that we were missing something in our goat herd, but worry no more! Thanks to the West Hawaii Humane Society the family is complete - we've now got a billy goat. According to hubby, we can now get more baby goats from our own little herd. Oh happy day[/sarcasm] He wants to name the billy goat Billy, of all things. I told him that was the lamest name for a billy goat in the entire world, and since Angel #2 named her goat Billy Baaa'b, it just wouldn't work. I suggested naming it Robert, but I don't think they're going to listen to reason. I've decided that my goats name is Ruby. I dunno, she just looks like a Ruby to me.

It was a busy/good day at work today. The income had been coming in pretty slowly lately. But the last couple days, today especially, it was like people were fighting to get in the door to pay their bills. So, near the end of the day, I was going to the bank to make a deposit and I'd mentioned to the boss man that I was jonsin' for some Starbucks, so I was going to go there before heading back. That must have sounded good to him too, and he offered to buy Starbucks for everyone in the shop. Yay Tony! But an vente iced cinnamon dolcee latte has a whole lot of sugar and caffeine and I had it rather late in the day, so now it's quarter to ten and I'm all hopped up. I may not get to sleep until tomorrow morning at this rate, which isn't a good thing, since tomorrow morning I'm meeting some writer friends for, what else? Coffee!

I got an e-mail yesterday from a cousin of my mom's. I think the last time I saw her was over 11 years ago at my grandpa's funeral. She's heard that I was a writer and is going to read my books (she also thought it was cool that I used her grandmas - my great-grandma's - name as a pen name). I'm really happy that I write rather mild, sweet romances and not the hot stuff, since this particular cousin happens to be a nun. When I was little I absolutely adored this woman, probably because she was usually the instigator of the annual family reunion water balloon fight. For a while, I even wanted to be a nun, just like here. Since I was a little Lutheran girl at the time, that would have been quite an accomplishment. I obviously got over the desire to join a convent.

Baby steps

Our insurance company has this great deal to try to get people in shape. Apparently, healthy people don't get sick as often as unhealthy people and insurance companies LOVE people who don't use their services. So, for $100, I can get a years membership in any local gym. So, not being able to pass up a good deal, I signed myself and Angel #2 up. I've belonged now for about 2 weeks and hubby drops this bombshell on me. He says joining isn't enough, you have to GO there and exercise and sweat and stuff if you want to get in shape. Just goes to show, you've got to read the fine print, if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Today I finally went there and got myself and the angel signed up for an orientation session with a trainer. We go on Saturday afternoon. I'd better see some pretty good results, we've got a party to go to at the beach on Sunday and I want to look good in my swimsuit.

goat pics!

Here's a visual to go with JeanieC's song This is Elvis and Clementine, the juvenile delinquents of the goat world, traipsing on the roof. Yeah, they're pain in the butt, but look at how gosh darn cute they are:

This little guy is either Pickle or Billy Baaab. They both look the same to me, but the girls can tell them apart.

Today, we finally got rain. It was so nice to hear it pattering on the roof (MUCH nicer than hearing the goats). I checked back and the last time we got rain was Dec 20 - I know this because that's when we had a downpour, high winds and trees falling down. We haven't had nary a drop since then and things were getting pretty dry around here. Our grass is all dead and our driveway was a literal dustbowl. So, it was nice to get a little rain again. I'm sure, come summer when the rainy season starts and we get a shower almost every afternoon, I'll be sick of rain, but I sure appreciated it today.

Up on the housetop

Around 6:30 this morning, I was in the shower when I heard a horrific racket up on the roof. Elvis and Clementine had gone exploring. Do you have any idea how much noise little goat hooves make on a tin roof? Our house is perched on the side of a hill and we have a rock wall that is almost even with the roof in the back, making it easy for the little monsters to get up there and traipse around. We're going to be blocking that obviously - hopefully before we have a goat come through one of the skylights.

I'm trying to put curtains up in our living room. I moved the furniture around a couple weeks ago and now the afternoon sun shines right on my favorite chair, making it really warm. About a week and a half ago, I bought curtains and a curtain rod. Today I took the rod out of the package and piled the hardware on the windowsill along with the screw gun. Hopefully, within the next month, the rod will actually get screwed to the wall, then it'll only be a matter of weeks before I string the curtains onto the rod. Of course, by then, the days will have gotten longer and the sun won't be shining on me in the afternoons anymore, but I'll be all set for next winter.

Goat farming, a baaa...d idea?

Hubby came home yesterday with 6 goats. He'd been wanting goats for a while and found some people who had to get rid of their herd, of course, hubby took them all. So we've got 2 mama goats, 2 middle sized goats (the kids call them the teenagers) and 2 little baby goats. Throw in a troll and it sounds like we've got a Grimm's fairytale in the making. We just had to chase the teenagers off the roof, the little buggers really like to climb. Since there are 6 of us and 6 goats, we each get to name one. Angel #4 named one of the little babies Pickle, the boys named the teenagers Elvis and Clementine, hubby named one of the mama's B7PM (don't ask). Angel #2 and I haven't named ours yet, I guess I have to get to know her before hooking her up with a name. Claudia and Charlie, the sheep, don't seem to mind the new additions, Jake the wonder dog loves having new animals to smell. The best part though, according to hubby, is that if we want to, we can milk them. Oh happy day! I was just saying the other day that what would make my life complete is if I could milk a goat. uh...yeah.

The babies are really cute, actually, I think goats in general are cute. The kids brought the babies into the house this afternoon. My living room consisted of 2 11 year old girls, 5 teenagers (of the human variety) and 2 baby goats. I was sitting right in the middle of the chaos trying to talk to my sister on the phone when Angel #1 plopped a goat on my lap, I told him to get it off and my sister's voice came over the phone: "Did you just tell someone to get a goat off your lap? Aren't you in your living room?" Is it any wonder my family thinks I'm nuts?

Avatar actors live here

In honor of her birthday yesterday, Angel #2 decided to dye her hair black. Of course, these things never go as planned and her hair didn't exactly turn Raven Black as promised on the box. My daughter now has purple hair, don't worry though, it goes nicely with the blue neck and hands the dye also gave her. So, the dye colored everything, just not the color it said it would. She actually likes it, she said she likes the response she gets from 'old people'. One lady at church this morning was almost speechless, so of course, the angel had to ask her if she liked her new hair. The response was a very curt 'NO'. Oh well, it's only hair, it'll grow back.

The angel got a camera for her birthday and has been taking pictures pretty much constantly since she got it. The one on this post is courtesy of her photographic skills.

We've got new bathroom drama at work. This guy, who's kind of the self-proclaimed manager of the building is obsessed with the bathroom. I've told you about him before. After the bathroom was painted, he actually asked me how I liked the new bathroom. How are expected to respond to a question like that? He also put a lock on the door after we expressed to him our fears of accidentally walking in on someone else using the toilet. You need a key to get into the bathroom and his excuse for no lock was that it was just those of us at our particular business that used that bathroom, so what was the point? My boss said that he'd actually rather have a random bum walk in on him while he was on the toilet than someone he worked with every day. I think the manager guy got the hint and put a lock on the door (which he was extremely proud of). I used to knock before opening the door, but I thought that since there was a slider bolt on the door, it would be safe to just open it up and walk in. Not so. I REALLY did NOT want to see that. It was some other person that worked in a neighboring business, who wasn't even supposed to be in there in the first place. Of course, I slammed the door shut and the manager guy is across the parking lot and he saw the whole thing and starts shouting at me "TELL HIM TO SLIDE THE BOLT! TELL HIM TO SLIDE THE BOLT!" I'm thinking he's already figured that out by now, a little to late for me though. So, then I'm thinking, what do I do, stand around outside the door and wait for this guy to come out? Decide that I really didn't need to go that badly after all and leave? The choice was taken away from me when the guy comes out and says 'I guess I should remember to slide the lock. I forgot that there are ladies here'. I tell the guys in the shop my adventure when I get back and they said forget the whole ladies here, we don't want to see him sitting on the toilet either. Other people work in normal places - but seriously, does it really surprise you that I don't?

my thoughts on Darwin

Afton's post on Darwining people out who text while driving reminded me of a conversation I had with the kids a couple weeks ago. You know how you click on a newslink to read an article then there's a headline to a different article on the sidebar that looks interesting, so you click on that and keep going farther and farther into the world of interesting/weird news articles? Well, that happened to me the other day and I found myself reading an article about people in Australia messing around with crocodile traps, which I assume is really dangerous because the article said it was. The latest was some yahoos posted a picture on their Facebook of a couple guys INSIDE the crocodile traps, which is really a bad idea, especially if the trap happens to catch a croc while you're in there. I was laughing at the article, partly because of the peoples stupidity and partly because it was using Australian slang, which just sounded funny (I think I want to start calling people Drongos now) and I read it out loud to the kids. Angel #1 said that eventually they'll Darwin themselves out and I told him they already had, the croc trap episode took place outside of Darwin, Australia! LOL Maybe that's just how people are made out there.

keep your hands off my cell membranes

Angel #2 is working on her science project. It's a model of the six stages of cell mitosis done with cake, licorice and Jolly Ranchers. It was a bit of a challenge keeping everyone out of the cell fixings, but she's almost got the project done. She's also talked 2 of her teachers into have class potlucks in honor of her birthday, so she had to make cupcakes for those as well. All her cakes combined with the poppyseed torte I made for hubby's birthday today makes for sugar overload at the Daydreamer house.

I got hubby a poster with all the guitar chords displayed. He's been teaching himself how to play and he's getting pretty good and I thought the poster would help. Angel #4 got him some candy from the local convenience store and WE complained that she made the rest of them look bad because they didn't get him anything. We'll see if their guilt carries over to Angel #2's birthday on Saturday and they get her something.

The remodeling of my office at work is almost done and I got lights and air conditioning installed over the weekend. It's pretty nice working in there now, especially since they also set my desk up so I don't have to do all my work at the counter anymore. Our company curmudgeon was also let go and was replaced with a different guy. I've got to say, it's a lot more pleasant listening to the new guy, Rollie, singing than it was listening to the other guys cussing - even if Rollie was singing Blue Christmas this afternoon. Christmas songs in January is more tolerable than F-bombs any time.

Debbie gets a bath

I rented a carpet shampooer today and have been going to town on my cruddy carpets. They hadn't been cleaned since we moved here a year ago and hadn't been cleaned by the previous tenants, so who knows how long it's been since they got a good scrubbing. If the amount of dirty water I've been dumping down the drain is any indication, it's been a looong time. My main project though is cleaning Debbie's upholstery. Debbie is the name of the car we bought this spring. I don't know what the previous owners were doing in that thing, but Debbie's interior was beyond filthy. I've been wanting to get it cleaned for a long time now, but you know how those things go. Besides, it rains a lot here and I figured it would take forever for it to dry, so I needed to choose my cleaning day carefully or someone was going to be walking around with a wet butt after driving someplace. Well, we're having a horrible drought here, so I figured I might as well take advantage of it and give Debbie a good chance to dry out. So Debbie is sitting outside with her windows cracked and hopefully she'll be dry enough that the kids won't get a wet butt on their way to school tomorrow.

They've finally outlaws talking on cell phones while driving on our island. It went into affect on Jan 1st. They made the law in October, but didn't implement it until the first of the year because, according to the paper, they needed to put up signage telling people of the new law. Well, here it is, 3 months later, the law is in effect and there still aren't any signs warning people that it's against the law to gab on the phone when they're supposed to be focusing on driving. That hasn't stopped the cops from pulling people over - I know one person who got a warning. I'm guessing they'll hand out warnings for the first couple weeks until the word gets out, then hopefully start slapping fines on those people who think that talking to their BFF is more important that paying attention to the road.

so far - so good

The new year has progressed pretty much the same as last year. I don't know what I was thinking though, trying to go to bed before midnight. The fireworks were pretty loud, a couple the neighbors shot off actually created a concussion before we even heard the blast. Then at midnight was the annual 'who can make the longest string of firecrackers' contest. We can hear them all from our house and there were some that lasted about 15 minutes - that's 15 minutes of constant firecrackers all strung together. Now that's a lot of firecrackers. Fortunately, enough people were careful of dry conditions this year and we didn't have any major fires, though the fire department was kept busy and got called out to douse about a dozen fires in and around town.

Yesterday, hubby worked on the treehouse with the kids and Angel #4 and her friend slept in it last night. We didn't think they'd make it through the night, but they were still up there sacked out when I left the house at 8:45 to meet a friend for coffee this morning.

I bought a calendar today finally. I thought I'd better do it since organizing my life with sticky notes doesn't work too well. Besides, you really DO need a calendar hanging in your kitchen - it's a law or something. There's some kind of calendar shortage this year. Usually stores have them prominently displayed in December so people don't forget to pick a couple out, but none of the stores I went to did. I had to search Walmart today trying to find them. Turns out they were in the souvenir department and they only had those cheesy tourist pictures of Hawaii ones. Heck, if I want to see Hawaii, I'll look out my window. I was wanting a comic one so I could have a little laugh when I saw it. Heck, even a stupid puppy one would be better than Hawaii in Pictures: a 2010 Calendar. Instead, I've got a year of looking at volcanoes and palm trees. Bo-ring. But, on the bright side, I've got all appointments, days off of school etc marked down, so I shouldn't forget anything important now for the next year.

all is calm

Last night both girls had friends over - the house was in giggle overload. It didn't help that we went back to Target to buy more candy, so they were all sugared up. Both sets of girls bought gingerbread house kits, so the kitchen is sticky with frosting and candy.

Tonight we're not really doing anything for new years. The family was invited to the annual shoot-em up New Years Eve paintgun war/potluck dinner, but it was held at a friends house a 2 our drive away and I really didn't feel like traveling that far. Angel #1 went there with friends though, he just can't resist a good paintgun war. Angel #2 is roaming town with her pink-haired BFF, then spending the night, WE is enjoying the holiday vicariously through a fireworks display on World of Warcraft. Angel #4 and her buddy were going to spend the night in the treehouse, but hubby deemed it unsafe, so the venue changed to the trampoline instead. We were just starting to take bets on how long they'd last out there when they came tromping into the house with all their gear claiming it was too cold to sleep out there. They made it to 9:00.

We can hear fireworks going off all over the place. I hope people are careful. We've got a bit of a drought going on right now and for the last few days, there's been a wildfire burning about 20 miles away from us - the 3rd in the last 2 weeks. They're having trouble putting this one out because it's in an inaccessible area - the only roads leading there are 4WD only and the forest canopy is so thick over the area that's burning that they can't dump water on the fire from helicopters. Every once in a while I catch a whiff of smoke in the air, though not as bad as the fire from 2 weeks ago - that one stunk up all the clothes I had hanging on the clothesline. Fireworks on New Years is one of the Hawaiian traditions we've had to get used to. You don't hear too many fireworks going off in Wisconsin on midnight of New Years, instead, everyone just hugs each other, thrilled that they made it through another year without freezing to death or being drained dry by F-16 sized mosquitoes. But in Hawaii, there are more fireworks on New Years than on July 4th. We'll be able to see the big displays the hotels put on from our front lanai - we've got a view of the entire town from there.

Anyhooters, I'm not planning on staying up til midnight unless the fireworks don't let me sleep. It's only a little after nine and I'm ready to hit the hay already. I DID watch the ball drop in Times Square though, courtesy of Hulu. One of the benefits of living in Hawaii is that I'm still awake to see that event since it happens at 7pm our time.

Happy New Years everyone - see ya in 2010!