Wednesday, March 31, 2010

toilet paper monitor

Yes, the bathroom drama has escalated (or degraded) to the point where Terry, the bathroom guard, has determined that too much toilet paper is being used in our work bathroom and he asked me to talk to the guys about over usage. Ugh, yeah. He also said that paper towels are disappearing. I mentioned the fact that maybe he should consider the fact that the whole area has become a central meeting area for the local homeless and could they possibly have something to do with this. Things just keep getting weirder and weirder over there, I'm telling ya. Makes going to work interesting though.

Tonight, the family was discussing the fact that money doesn't buy happiness, WE of course, disagreed. He told us that he'd be perfectly happy if he had enough money to afford a Jello house. For some reason, his dream is to some day own a house made completely out of Jello. To think that other people want silly things like yachts, sports cars or mansions.


Monday, March 29, 2010

are you ready for some baseball?!?

Today was the island tournament for the Special Olympics softball/tee-ball teams. Hubby and Angel #1 have been coaching softball for the last month or so and this was the first game that the guys played. They did awesome and ended up taking first on the island out of 4 teams. The tee-ballers didn't do quite as well and got 2nd place out of 2 teams, but they all had a great time. An added benefit of the day was that it gave us a chance to say goodbye to our friends Scott and Chris. They joined the crew of another acquaintance, Matt's, sailboat, and they're heading out Saturday for an around the world cruise. Hopefully we'll all meet up again in 2 years when they return Hawaii.

We had a little excitement here Friday night. Logic says that with 3 cats in our house, we shouldn't see a mouse, but apparently, logic isn't always right. We were sitting in the living room with some friends having a Bible study when Angel #4 says, just as calmly as can be, "there's a mouse under the couch." I was across the room from the couch, but that didn't stop me from freaking out and putting my feet up on my chair. WE ran outside and grabbed his cat, but with all the yelling and screaming going on, AK-47 freaked out and ran the opposite direction of the mouse. It was just a little mouse, and Angel #4 managed to catch it with her bare hands (insert full body shiver of revulsion here). We ended up chucking it out the door since we couldn't find a cat around willing to earn its keep. To think I've been buying the lazy wretches Kitty Chow for the last three years and when a real live meal on the hoof shows up, nobody's willing to do their catly duty.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

we're turning into one of them

The old guys at the complex where I work love to create drama where there is none - for some reason it usually seems to be centered around the bathroom, but that's neither here nor there. Well, this week we 'young people' have discovered we've fallen into the same trap. One of the guys lives in a little apartment up over our shop - an apartment over a small engine repair shop, not exactly prime real estate. He lives there with his wife and the other day, Tony mentioned that he hadn't seen her around lately. Our first thought was that she was dead (these people are REALLY old) but realized that we would have heard if she'd died. We then decided that she must have run off with Lee, the 90 year old guy who has an alternator repair shop next to ours. I don't know why we picked Lee to be her boy toy, but once the idea was planted, it not only took root, but grew like Jack's beanstalk. We were having way too much fun making up a little geriatric soap opera involving all the oldsters who roam around the shop. A few days afterward, the wife was there on the balcony again where she usually hangs out, so then we made up a new episode where Chuck was trying to win Marilyn back from that womanizer, Lee. Yeah, we really need to be spending more time fixing machines and less fantasizing about the 85 year olds who surround us.

I've been falling behind in life lately, so, since it's been slow at work (and the whole Chuck/Marilyn/Lee love triangle has calmed down), I took today off work to do a little catch-up around the house. I managed to get 3 loads of laundry done, a batch of chocolate chip cookies made, baked 4 loaves of homemade bread, got my bathroom cleaned and, most importantly, got half the final pre-galley edits done on my book. I'm pretty pleased with all I got accomplished today and hope I'm as productive tomorrow. My goal is to get my book finished and sent back to my editor by the end of the weekend. Once that's done, I get my galley copy, which is the last step before the book goes into production. I don't read the galley copy myself, by the time my books at that stage, I've read it so many times that I can't see any errors anymore. I usually have a friend read the galley for me and look for any errors or typos so I can send them in. After 5 years writing and re-writing this book, I'm getting pretty darn sick of it, if you want to know the truth. I was having a hard time doing this last round of edits, I wasn't paying attention to what I was reading. So, I've been reading the entire thing out loud so I can catch any errors. My family thinks I'm nuts...maybe I am.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

The Caddyshack school of housecleaning

Thursday morning I got into work and found grit, dirt and other crap all over my keyboard. A little more investigation showed that the crud was over everything on my desk, on the customer check-in counter and the stuff we have for sale on the shelves. The guys had all left the shop to do some outside jobs, so I was there by myself and spent a good 45 minutes cleaning things up and wondering what in the world could have happened to get dirt over everything. When the guys got back, I asked Tony, my boss what had happened. They'd been doing a little construction in the showroom the night before and drywall dust, insulation and other stuff was all over the floor. To clean it up, he took a leaf blower from the back and blew all the dirt out the door (and all over everything in the process). This is the kind of stuff that happens when you work with a bunch of guys.

Yesterday, we went to our friends, Steve and Alice's, 50th wedding anniversary party. We've known them since we moved down here and see them at least twice a week, every week, at church. In all that time, I hadn't known what a romantic guy Steve is. Listen to this and tell me that this guy is one of a kind. When they got married, Alice's wedding bouquet was pink carnations and red roses. On their first anniversary, Steve gave Alice a single pink carnation. On their 2nd anniversary, he got her 2 pick carnations, and so on until their 10th anniversary, when he got her a single red rose. For the 11th, she got a rose and a carnation and, well, you get the picture. Steve has done this for 50 years and this weekend, Alice got 5 red roses. Can you imagine in those early years when he was buying 4 or 5 carnations that Steve ever thought that he'd be buying 5 red roses some day? In honor of this tradition, each of the tables at yesterdays party had a centerpiece of 5 red roses. Isn't that just the most romantic?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Tim is no more

One of our baby goats died tonight - she got her tether wrapped around something too tight and strangled herself. She was Angel #2's goat and she'd named it Tim even though it was a girl. The angel wasn't too surprised about Tim's demise since she doesn't seem to have a whole lot of luck with livestock. When the kids were little, we would get each of them a calf to care for during the summer, every year, even though each calf got the exact same food and lived in the exact same pen, Angel #2's calf would always die. It's like she's an animal death wish or something.

We don't get worked up over St Pat's day in our family. Angel #4 says there's some Irish in them, must be on their Dad's side because the only ethnic holiday I can legitimately celebrate is German Oktoberfest and a Dutch kermis, both of which they had up in Wisconsin. Down here they celebrate things like Prince Kuhio Day. Anyway, the town where we used to live had a HUGE St Patrick's Day parade. They even changed the name of the town to New Dublin for the week preceding the parade. Things get kind of nuts up there - it's even crazier than you think when you consider that despite what the calendar may say, March is still technically winter in Wisconsin. The last year we lived there, there was a nasty blizzard the day of the parade. I'm guessing that the bagpipers made an exception and did, indeed wear something under their kilts that day. Of course, something silly like 5 inches of snow doesn't slow things down up there and the parade went on as scheduled. Needless to say, I decided to skip it that year. One year, the Friends of the Library decided to have a brat (bratwurst) fry and sell them during the parade. The brats didn't go over too well, but we drew one heck of a crowd of people gathered around the grill to warm up. There are a few things I miss about Wisconsin - freezing my tail off isn't one of them. But, I AM jonesin' for some deep-fried cheese curds.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

yeah, yeah, I know

I've been totally slacking in the blog updating department lately. Heck, I used to write just about every day and now I'm lucky if I post once a week. I guess after over 6 years of blog posts, there's only so much you can say.

Angel #1 is heading out tomorrow morning to Oahu to do some JrROTC training on one of the military bases over there. It'll give him a little taste of what basic training will be like, though I think they're a whole lot easier on a bunch of visiting high school kids than they are on the actual recruits at boot camp. A friend who's a former Marine was telling me today a little about boot camp and I'm sure glad it's the Angel going and not me. Our friend told me that he lost 60 pounds when he was in boot camp and I said that if my kid lost 60 pounds there wouldn't be anything left of him. Our friend said they have special markings on the fatties clothing so they only get half portions of food in the chow line (our friend was a marked fattie). He also said that the ones deemed too scrawny, get labeled for double portions and they try to stick the fatties next to the scrawnies in the chow line to mess with them all the more. Sounds like tons of fun, eh?

Talk about fatties, I haven't been able to get to the gym for a workout in over a week now. I've even got a good excuse, with the van still out of commission, I can't stop by after work and it just doesn't make sense to make the drive back to town in the evening just so I can sweat and make myself sore. Hopefully, hubby gets my van fixed soon so I can go back to being the buff babe everyone's coming to expect from me. :p

Friday, March 12, 2010

all work and no play

My van is still dead - hopefully hubby will get it going this week. The repercussions of the dead vehicle is that Angel #1 has to drop me off at work on his way to school and pick me up afterwards. This messes up my day since I usually don't go into work until 10 or 10:30, and now I'm out of the house by 7:30. I usually do my household chores in the morning before work and now they're not getting done. Then, there's the added stress of sitting in the passenger's seat and trying my hardest not to tell the Angel he's driving too fast, not braking soon enough or taking corners too fast - you know, the usual mom things.

I'll spare you the horrifying details, but the latest thing with the bathroom obsessed old guy at work involves him standing post outside the bathroom door to make sure everyone flushes - I repeat, you do NOT want to know the details of this little endeavor, just be happy it's not you in the bathroom.

Monday, March 8, 2010

it's been a week

Hubby's been in Wisconsin for the last week, so I've been captaining the ship here - doing rather well, if I do say so myself.

The starter died on our van this week. Fortunately, I was parked about 2 blocks from work, so I called there and the guys came and rescued me and towed the van to the lot at the shop where I work. The guy who has the bay next to ours rebuilds alternators and starters, so I'm going to see if he can revive my starter or if I'm going to have to part with some green and buy a new one. Either way, it's going to have to be done soon since we don't have another vehicle big enough to fit six people in it, which is how many we'll have once hubby gets back home.

I've had the song We Gotta Get Out of this Place stuck in my head all day today. It's much annoying.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

on autopilot

I'm really super tired, but am forcing myself to stay awake long enough to update here since I know most of you want to hear the exciting adventures of Me vs Tsunami. But, as you also know, it wasn't much of a battle since the tsunami didn't even show up for the fight. Hubby had flown in at 9:30 Friday night after a week long business trip in Texas. He was catching another flight at 7am Saturday morning for Oahu to go to coaches training for the Special Olympics, which meant he needed to leave the house at 5:45am. It was as he was driving to the airport that he noticed the cars parked on high ground and remembered he'd heard about an earthquake in Chili and figured that meant we were on tsunami alert. He called me (I'd just dozed off again) and had me check to see if the airports were open. While I had the radio on and was checking the internet, I got a phone call from my aunt in Missouri telling me about the tsunami alert, then the Special Olympics coordinator called to tell me that the training session was postponed, then the tsunami sirens started going off. It was then I realized that I wasn't going to get anymore sleep that morning. They rang the sirens every hour on the hour until 11am, which is when the first of the waves were supposed to start hitting. We could see the people on low ground driving up to higher from our porch. Since we're up at 1200ft, we knew we had nothing to worry about as far as the tsunami was concerned, and just made sure we had plenty of fresh water stored up in case everything went to pot here. Of course, nothing happened and we all went back to life as usual in the afternoon.

As tired as I was, I didn't sleep very well Saturday night and last night I decided to get a bladder infection in the middle of the night which doesn't do much for your sleeping pattern, so tonight, I'm really wiped out.

We got some sad news this morning. Hubby's mom, who's been battling cancer for the last few years died today. I just got back from taking hubby to the airport to spend a week up in Wisconsin. Though it wasn't too unexpected, you still get surprised when it happens, you know? At least we know she's not in pain anymore.

Angel #1 flew out to Oahu last night (my family seems to spend more time in the air than on land lately). Today he had his military physical and swearing in. My little boy is now a Marine. He's doing a delayed entry, so he won't actually be going in until this fall, so I've got to enjoy the next six months of having my boy home before he goes out to protect the freedom we have in this country and help people from other countries enjoy what we have. I'm nervous and incredibly proud all at the same time.