Holy rat bait Batman!

I was blaming Diesel, the doofus dog, for eating my wooden spoons. I kept finding chewed up ones and having to throw them away. But, the other day, I found a wooden spoon in the drawer, chewed up with shavings in the bowl of the spoon. Diesel gets himself into lots of predicaments, but even he can't open the silverware drawer, so I investigated. The whole back of the drawer was filled with wood shavings, not sawdust, but actual big shavings-like pieces and there was a big whole chewed in the back of the drawer. Now, these aren't whimpy, off-the-shelf kitchen cabinets, these are handmade, 1950's era cabinets made with inch thick lumber and some big freakin animal chewed right through it! What was especially disturbing about the whole thing is that it had chewed its way OUT of the drawer, not into it...and it also chewed up all my wooden spoons. This was no ordinary mouse, people. My sister thinks we've got a renegade beaver in the house, I suspect it's R.O.U.S.'s (Rodents Of Unusual Size for you Princess Bride impaired people) and I'm going to have to hire a heavy hitter to get rid of this creature. "My name is Inigo Montoya, you ate my silverware drawer, prepare to die!" We also got sticky traps and a big snappy trap in case swordplay fails. So far, we've only caught one little mouse in the basement, hubs suggested that instead of putting peanut butter on the traps we use a wooden spoon since that seems to be the most attractive to our unwanted guest.

poster child

WE is in drivers ed. The problem with the class block system that our high school implements is that kids are required to spend an hour and a half each day for 9 weeks for each class, even when it's a class that doesn't really need that much class time. Because of this, the driver's ed teacher really scrapes for things to keep the kids occupied. The thing he chose to occupy them with this week is that they had to make traffic safety posters. WE wasn't real dedicated to the poster thing, he figured that if driver's ed's main requirement is good poster making skills, he probably doesn't want to be on the road anyway. So, last night (the poster was due today) he was asking the family for a good slogan for his poster. He went with the old Calvin and Hobbes standby: Be Careful or Be Roadkill, thankfully, sans Calvin's spaghetti sauce, he figured the pictures of car accidents would have as good an effect. He said his was one of the worst posters in class, but at least he got his point across.

Angel #2 and I were at a thrift store today and what do you think I found there? A Mouli! I still haven't found mine and I was seriously debating buying the one at the store, it had all the blades, was in mint condition and only $8. But, I decided that I would hold out and hope for my own Mouli to someday make a reappearance. Besides, I've got my nifty Salad Shooter now and I really love that little guy.

vroom vroom pbthhh

I was running errands for hubby yesterday. Errands for hubby aren't like normal people errands, these errands involve fitting 2 furnaces along with the needed ductwork into my mini-van. Thank goodness the seats come out of those babies. So, I got all the stuff picked up, then started heading thirty miles away to do the delivery when my van decided to not go into high gear. I checked the relevant fluids and they all seemed okay, so after a telephone consultation with hubs (who really needed the stuff I had) we decided that I keep on driving and hope for the best. Just in case you didn't know, it's really nerve wracking to drive fifty miles an hour on a 65 mile an hour highway, but I sure didn't have to worry about being pulled over for speeding. I made it safely to hubs then made the 35 mile drive home at 45 mph then an additional 5 miles to the car fixer guy. It doesn't sound like it's going to be an expensive fix, which is a good thing, expensive fixes aren't any fun. (just got a call from the car fixer guy - he can't do the repair, looks like things might get spendy :( )

**I also have to say that I can't stop giggling about Castle calling ghosts Apparition Americans. :p

I will talk to you, singing will cost extra

I did my very first author talk for pay today. Imagine, getting paid to talk to a group of people who can't leave because they've got lunch and a meeting afterwards. It's like your birthday, 4th of July and Christmas all rolled up into one! I was asked to speak to the district meeting of a women's group, a whole bunch of people I'd never met before. Our local librarian gave the organizer my name as a suggestion for a speaker and we dealt through e-mail, so I didn't even know who I was looking for. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal until I got to the place where the event was being held and saw that about 3 or 4 different organizations were holding meetings there. I went up to one group and asked if they were who I was looking for, the woman asked if I was there to sing. GAH!!! I KNEW I was in the wrong place. I finally found out where I was supposed to be and did pretty good for my half hour speech. Afterwards I did a book signing and met some of the people, a very nice group of ladies.

I also went grocery shopping this afternoon. I hadn't gone in a couple weeks and my cupboards were starting to look bare. With all my canning and stuff, I still probably had twice as much food as a normal person, but I get antsy when my food supply drops past a certain level. I feel much better now seeing full shelves and a filled freezer. It's the little things in life that make me happy.

We used to laugh about this day

As of last Thursday, my baby girl aka Angel #4 is 13 years old. Way back in the day before we had kids, hubs and I used to joke that we were going to have 14 kids. Well, after Angel #4 was born, we rethought our options and decided that, unlike opinions expressed in popular tv dramas from the 70's, 4 is enough. When people picked on us for reneging on our original 14 kids, we explained that they misunderstood us and we were going to have four TEENS at the same time. Well, here it is, 13 years later and sure nuff, we're now the parents of four teenagers at once. I don't think we believed that day was ever really going to come and now here we are.

Friday night, #4 had her birthday party. I brought her and 5 of her friends to Wild Air, which is a big bouncy house place for big kids. WE decided that if #4 was going to have a bunch of her friends over, he needed reinforcements, so he had a friend overnight as well. At around 9 o'clock, Angel #2 walked in with a friend who was also going to stay the night. If you haven't done the math yet, that makes 10 teenagers sleeping in my house. #4 and her friends were watching movies in the living room, WE and his friend were in his bedroom watching '300', and while I love Gerard Butler, it's really hard to fall asleep when his Scottish/ancient Grecian accent is yelling for the Spartans to die for glory or whatever he was growling about. Angel #2 and her friend were up until 2am making soap and bath salts to sell at a craft sale they were vendering in on Saturday. So yeah, I didn't get much sleep. There was also an airsoft war going on and I have the feeling I'll be stepping on plastic bb's in my house for the next month or two. Thank goodness Angel #4 only has birthdays once a year.

an owange cawnation, how womantic

Tonight was Angel #4's volleyball parents night. Hubs and I, along with Angel #4 and Rent-a-Grandma all went to watch her play. Between the 8th & 7th grade games, each play called her parents out to the court where we were given an orange carnation tied with a black ribbon (orange and black are the school colors). Of course, I managed to break the stem of the flower off before we even manage to get home. I've got skilz. With orange and black being the school colors and with me being a cheapskate, I'm planning on hitting the clearance sales after Halloween and buying up orange and black socks, tee-shirts and whatever else seems school spirit-ish and giving them to the kids so they can show their Panther pride without me breaking the bank. Thursday is #4's last volleyball game. WE has got the conference meet for cross country on Thursday and the sectional meet the 22nd. Since the odds are pretty slim that he'll make state for cross country, I think that we'll soon be in the clear for after school sports practice...until someone decides they want to take part in the next round of winter sports. WE keeps waffling back and forth about wrestling and #4 doesn't sound like she's too interested in basketball, so I may have a couple of quiet months ahead of me.

I finally finished painting my dining room today. I had almost the entire room done, except for one corner where hubs has his desk. When I painted the first stuff, I was too lazy to move the desk, so today I finally decided that I should have at least one room completely painted and done. There's still a little bit of trim that needs doing in there, but nothing too noticeable. I also painted part of the stairwell. It's got a really really high ceiling that's going to take some creative scaffolding to finish, but did what I could with just standing on the steps and moving the paint roller as far as I could. So now my stairwell is an interesting mixture of lime green on the bottom and pepto-bismol pink on the top. It looks like something you might find in your Easter basket. The only way you can see the two-tone though is if you're upstairs looking down or right at the bottom of the steps looking straight up, so from the dining room, my stairway looks utterly respectable. So, that makes one respectable looking room in my house. Some day, I may even get around to getting my kitchen cabinets painted, but don't hold your breath.

we ran all the way over there for that?

Overheard in the library bathroom yesterday:

Mother: come on Ashley, hurry up and poop. I won't watch, just hurry

Ashley: I did. See my poopy

Mother: that's it? We came rushing in here for that little turd? You can do better than that.

Ashley: no, I'm done pooping now, lets go back to the park.

Me (in my mind): I'm SO glad my kids are grown up!

Yesterday I was driving along the country roads, the Eagles blasting on the radio, the van windows open, the smell of harvesting corn in the air and the beautiful colors of the fall leaves on that gorgeous Indian Summer afternoon and I felt sorry for anyone who didn't live in rural Wisconsin. Today was exactly the same and, according to the weather reports, we've got more of the same coming into the middle of next week. I planted a bunch of tulip and daffodil bulbs this afternoon which will be a welcome sight come spring. I also took advantage of the weather and got all the old dead weeds and plants cleared out of the garden, so that looks all pretty and ready for winter as well. Life is good.

Tonight, hubs and I are going to the high school football game. Angel #4 is playing the halftime show with the middle school band. Fortunately, since the weather is nice, we won't have to freeze our patooties off. WE had his last regular season cross country meet tonight, I haven't heard how he did yet. Next he's got conference and sectionals, then he should be done for the season since I don't foresee him going to state. It sounds like he's wanting to go out for wrestling this winter, which will be something new for us around here. Hubs and his dad were both pretty big into wrestling when they were in high school and college, we'll see if those skills were passed down to the next generation.

purple hair and toilet paper

Yesterday, Angel #2 decided to fix her turquoise hair, she claimed it made her look like a mermaid, but apparently she decided that the marine look just wasn't her. So she went to a professional this time where they dyed her hair close to her natural color, then put purple highlights in it. I never thought I'd be a fan of purple hair, but it's much better than the turquoise.

Yesterday was also my sister's birthday, so I gave her a call. We hadn't spoken in a while, so we had a little bit of a gabfest. I was telling her that I thought our cats had taken care of any mice we may have had in the house. Of course, you know what that means. About 3:30 this morning, I was woke up by the sound of a mouse scurrying across the bedroom floor. I guess we'll be leaving our bedroom door open tonight so the cats can take care of that little issue.

The mouse in the bedroom incident made me realize how tuned in my ears are to certain sounds. After the Homecoming football game last night, WE went out with friends toilet papering peoples yards. I feel sorry for high school kids in big cities, they never get to experience that great, autumn small town sport, TPing. Anyway, he was told he had to be home by midnight. I heard him come in the house at about ten to twelve, and once I knew he was home safe, I conked right out and didn't hear a thing til the mouse. It was when I woke up this morning that I saw that sometime after WE got home, our yard also got TP'd. WE found out from his friends that 2 minutes after they dropped him off and drove away that they turned around and TP'd our yard. I never heard a thing, even though we've got toilet paper wrapped around the front porch posts and WE's best friend's name was written in silly string on the side of our mini-van. We also decided that our dog, Diesel, is a really sucky watch dog, he never even made a peep. I had WE clean up some of the yard this afternoon, but he left the paper in the trees. His reasoning is that it's even more fun to TP a house after the first round of toilet paper has already been picked up, so if he keeps our trees filled with paper until Sunday, it won't be quite as tempting to hit our yard a second time.

Right now, WE's at the homecoming dance. I still can't believe he asked a girl to the dance. He claimed he wasn't nervous or excited about it, but he was all dressed and ready to go by noon for his 5 o'clock date. She came to pick him up and he waited in the driveway, practically on the side of the road so we couldn't get a good look at her or embarrass him in anyway. Us, embarrass him?!? Can you even imagine such a thing?

Today, I got to meet my first Congressman. He's not the Congressman for our district, but a friend hooked us up with an invite to a bar-b-que the Congressman was holding. He's someone hubs needed to network with in an effort to see if he could meet with some people in Hawaii. Anyway, mission accomplished. Reid (he told us to call him Reid, so now we're on a first name basis la-di-da!!) was already planning on being in Hawaii with his family this winter and sounded like he'd be happy to do the island hop to do some speechifying. My husband is a networking dynamo!