time - it does fly

Almost a week's gone by since I posted last. I'm not sure if it's because my life's too busy to have time to post or if my life's too boring to find something to post about.

Tomorrow is my birthday - since it's already Monday just about everywhere but here, we'll just say Hey, today is my birthday! I love my birthday. It's not because I get presents, because I don't really get a whole lot, we don't make a deal about birthdays at our house. It's not the cake either, because actually, I don't really like cake. I think it's just the fact that it's my birthday and it's mine and mine only, besides the other 10 kajillion people whose birthday's are April 12. I just like having somethings that's all mine...maybe this can be traced back to the fact that for most of my life I wanted my own bedroom and I had to share with my sister who used to leave her dirty laundry on the bedroom floor and gross me out. I had to get my own apartment before I got my own room - I feel sorry for twins that have to share a birthday, because a birthday isn't something you should have to share. WE had a little money saved up and was going to buy me something, but this morning, I had some special Olympics stuff to do before church and the kids waited for me in the car, which I parked in front of a grocery store. He couldn't handle the pressure, I guess, because when I got back into the car, he told me he'd spent my birthday present money on a doughnut. But he assured me that he was thinking of me when he ate the doughnut, and it's the thought that counts, right mom? Uh, yeah.

The special olympics event today was a power lifting tournament. One of the guys bench pressed over 400 pounds! He just turned 18 a couple weeks ago, so imagine what he's going to be able to do in a year or two when he's fully mature. I think he'll be a force to be reckoned with at State Games next month. One of our other lifters won a gold a while ago at the National Games in China. Must be something in the water here that produces such awesome weightlifters. I'm still pretty wimpy though - I must not be drinking enough water.

and he's off again!

I just got back from dropping hubby off at the airport. He's on his way to Washington DC to see a friend/do a job. He's planning on seeing the sights and, in true hubby fashion, has talked to one of his infamous contacts and is going to be rubbing elbows with some of the uppity-ups on capitol hill. He had to dig his suit out of mothballs for this one.

On the way home I stopped by Lowes and picked up a new faucet for our kitchen sink. Saturday night, ours broke off, shooting water across the room in the process. This happened not too long ago, which tells you that they either make them really chintzy or my family is really hard on kitchen faucets. Anyway, since this happened late Saturday night and the next day was Easter, there wasn't an opportunity to get a new one until Monday, which of course, I forgot to pick up on my way home from work. So I finally got around to getting one tonight. In the meantime, we had to use a substitute since otherwise the water shot out of the little hose thing at huge force and splashed all over the place. Hubby aka Mr. Fixit, discovered that it was the exact same fitting as the handheld shower head in our bathroom, so we screwed it into our kitchen sink hose and using our showerhead as the kitchen faucet. Then, when we wanted to take a shower, we had to unscrew it from the kitchen and put it in the tub. Of course, we'd always forget to do the switch until we were already standing naked in the shower about to turn the water on, so we made a few trips running from our bathroom to the kitchen wearing nothing but a bath towel. It's all good now though and we're back to having a kitchen faucet in the kitchen and a shower head in the bathroom.

breadfruit anyone?

Hubby decided that he was going to find a recipe for breadfruit that the family likes. We've got a HUGE breadfruit tree in the backyard and the thing is just loaded with fruit. The only way we've had it was sliced thin and deep-fried into chips, which were okay, but not worth the effort of making again. So, today, he tried chips again, as well as slicing them into pieces and making them into french fries. He also stuck one in the oven, they're in there baking now. I think he's going to scoop them out and make them like mashed potatoes. He also cut some up and tried them steamed. Yep, all breadfruit all the time. The fries tasted good and the steamed stuff tasted like boiled potatoes, I guess we'll find out how the baked stuff tastes when it comes out of the oven. We're hoping we'll find a couple ways we like them because that's a whole lotta free food out there. Auntie Violet, our local native Hawaiian guru, makes breadfruit salad, which tastes a whole lot like potato salad. I guess I'll have to try that as well.

It's become an obsession

The guys obsession with the bathroom at work has carried over to our staff. This was confirmed to me yesterday when I asked one of the guys if he'd heard what had happened Wednesday(someone had pulled a particularly successful April fools joke). He said: about the toilet paper? LOL

Angel #2 is a bit OCD - I tend to take advantage of this little trait of hers. When she starts on a job, she doesn't let up until it's done and done perfectly. Yesterday, I took her to work with me because we needed some sales booklets put together. It's not hard work, just slow and putzy and I don't have time to do it. Since we still don't have our van fixed, hubby took the car to go on a job and was going to drop it off for us when he was done so we could drive home. Well, #2 was done with the booklets and hubby hadn't shown up yet, so I put her to work scrubbing the floors in the showroom. Simple vinegar and water wasn't really doing the trick, so I sent her out to get ammonia and a scrub brush. Let's just say that girl puts the "O" in obsessive. She worked for hours on that floor and wouldn't quit, even after hubby dropped the car off and I was ready to head for home. We ended up working until 5 o'clock, just because she couldn't quit scrubbing. She wants to go back to day and finish up, but she hasn't gotten out of bed yet and I've got the feeling that when she does, her arms are going to be too sore to want to start scrubbing again.

WE caught a dove today and put it in a bird coop that he's been working on for the last few weeks. The cats are incredibly interested in this critter and are sitting outside the pen watching it. WE wanted to know what to name it and I said that if he asked the cats, they'd probably say "Lunch". So, we now have a dove named Lunch. I've got the feeling we won't for long though - I don't think that coop is as cat-proof as WE thinks it is.

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.

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.

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.