you can't get here from there

Thanks for the website suggestion, AD, I'll check it out.

Tonight, on our way home from Bible study, I decided to try a different route home. It wasn't long before I realized that we'd 'gone adventuring' which is what I call it when I don't have a clue where I am. Our 20 mile drive home took about 45 minutes. We've got a huge 4'X4' mounted and framed map of the area in our living room - hubs brought it home yesterday for Angel #2 as a joke, she went adventuring last weekend. He told her she could keep it in the car in case she got lost again. So tonight when we eventually got home, Angel #4 and I marked out on the map where exactly we'd gone. There's one little gap in one section of our trip though because we were so out in the boonies that there weren't road signs on some of the corners, so I'm not exactly sure where we all were. But, we made it home, so it's all good. This being an unfamiliar area to me, I learn a lot from my adventuring trips. It helps get a grip on the layout of the area if you've been lost there. Heck, if I ever end up in that town called Larrabee again, it'll almost be like visiting an old friend.

Angel #2's cell phone fell out of her pocket today and landed on the floor. The back fell off and the battery popped out, so it was in three pieces. For some reason, when that happened, I said "your cat exploded". Yeah, I don't know why either. Anyway, that has struck her as extremely funny and now she keeps saying, your cat exploded and breaking out into giggles. Last week I also said something about getting a 'fart smone', which she also thinks is hilarious. That's me, the Queen of Malapropisms. I'm starting to feel like the mom in that tv show Raising Hope.

new place - new rules

Angel #2 got a taste of the no-touchy mid-western attitude yesterday. She got in trouble in school for an inappropriate display of affection. Her crime? She was hugging someone in the hallway. As she stated, in Hawaii it's practically considered rude if you don't hug somebody. It's different here where a quick handshake is about as up close and personal you get with someone you haven't known for at least five years. They let it go this time and she was warned to not let it happen again. Yep, things are a bit different up here.

IMBD used to be one of my favorite places on the web to visit. Here's the thing, I like movies, but don't actually have the patience to sit and watch most of them. So, I like to go on IMDB and read movie summaries, just because I'm interested in knowing the plot, resolution and major turning points, but not interested in using 1 1/2 hours of my life to watch it. This is especially true of horror movies, since I'm too chicken to watch them but love knowing the plots. But now, IMDB is pushing it's Pro version, which you have to pay for, of course. In order to lure you away from your $, they've restricted a lot of the information they used to put out there for free. As much as I love cruising around that site, just reading random stuff, I love not spending money even more. So, IMDB, I used to love you, but it's all over now.

life imitates art - or vice-versa

The recent episode of Modern Family struck a particularly hilarious note with me this week. For those of you who don't watch, here's a quick recap. Cam has decided to start exercising and insists on wearing a pair of spandex biking shorts and Mitch is trying to figure out how to tell him that biking shorts aren't a real good fashion choice without hurting Cam's feelings. Now, flash over to my house a couple weeks ago. Angel #2 came in the house saying that hubby was in the garage fixing the car in his underwear. Hubby followed her in saying it wasn't his underwear, but his spandex shorts. Yep, he was wearing spandex shorts. I asked him whatever possessed him to buy a pair of biking shorts and he said he didn't, he just found them in his closet so figured they were alright to wear. I made it VERY clear to him that the were not and never will be alright to wear. When I took a closer look at them, I figured out where they came from. My husband squeezed his 180 lb body into MY exercise shorts. These would be the shorts I only wear at home, with an oversized tee-shirt if I ever get the urge to exercise. The shorts I seldom wear because they're tight on my 110 lb body. The shorts I now have to burn because every time I see them in the future, the image of my husband wearing them will imprint itself onto my brain. Now I'm tempted to buy a teensy lacy thong and stick it in his underwear drawer just to see if I can get him to put those on as well.

Yesterday was Angel #4's birthday. My baby is 12 years old and in only one short year, I'm going to be mother to FOUR teenagers. I'm sure I can get a doctor to prescribe drugs for me for this situation. The giggling tween girl slumber party is Friday night, I'm guessing WE is going to find something else to do that night...I know I wish I could.

is that supposed to be blue?

Angel #2 got her senior pictures taken yesterday. Right after she got home, she and a friend went upstairs to her room and shortly after that, she asked if we had any old towels. I know what that means...hair dying time. I wasn't sure who was getting dyed or what color and didn't really want to know. After about fifteen minutes, someone said "is that supposed to be blue?" STILL didn't want to know what was going on. The Angel had wet sloppy looking hair when she said goodbye to her friend later and her friend was still the same blond she was when she walked in, so the question about who was getting dyed was answered, but the color question was still up in the air. This morning I heard her rustling around upstairs and I called up, asking her what color her hair was and her reply was "not the color it said on the box." Anyway, she's got this blondish reddish streaky thing going on and I'm just thankful she waited until AFTER senior pictures to get her new 'do.

This morning we headed over to a nearby town with Angel #4 to pick up a Craigslist purchase of a beginning drum set. Yeah, she thinks being a percussionist in the school band is a good idea - I'm not sold on it yet, but since I forked over $120 for a snare drum, xylophone (I spelled that right w/out even needing spell check) and various sticks, drum muffles and stuff, I guess it's a commitment. At least it's not a tuba.

It's been gorgeous weather here the last 3-4 days. The leaves are all turning and I think this weekend is the peak. I took a few pictures and one of these days I'll see about posting them. WE made a huge leaf pile in the back yard and had a blast diving into it. It won't be long and the leaves will be gone and the snowing will begin. Ug

RIP Dorisis

I saw in the obituaries that Dorisis died. Waaaay back when I was really little, my family lived in an upstairs apartment. Downstairs lived an old couple, Papa and Elsie and next door was their daughter and her family, who I assumed owned the building we lived in. Their daughter's name was Doris, but when I was little, I always called her Dorisis and my mom could never figure out why until she started listening to herself talk to me. She'd say things like "stay out of Doris's garden" and "don't run through Doris's laundry so it was only logical that I figured our neighbor's name was Dorisis. Doris's youngest son, Bruce and another neighbor kid, made sure I made it to my first Halloween party when I was really little and I still have the pink bunny stuffed animal their family gave me on my first Christmas. It was kind of weird, when we moved to Hawaii, I got rid of almost everything. I'm not very sentimental, so it wasn't that big a deal. But, there were a few things I couldn't get rid of and when looking around I saw that a lot of the things I kept were things I'd gotten from that family a million years ago. Papa and Elsie have been gone for a long time, Doris's sister and husband have both died within the last couple years. It's kind of like a chapter in life ending, ya know?

and he's off!

I dropped off a very excited husband at the airport this afternoon. This flight to Wash DC is going to be his first as an official premium frequent flyer. He's racked up enough flying miles now that he gets preferred status on flights, things like extra leg room seats at no extra charge, he gets to board the plane first and he no longer has to pay to check in his luggage. Now he gets to BE somebody - that guy you hate because he gets to jump in the front of the ticket line and who gets to stick his carryons in the overhead bin first, without having to wrestle with someone else's junk. He also gets additional frequent flyer miles with every flight he takes. His next goal is executive premium, I'm not sure what happens then. Maybe he gets a personal flight attendant dressed like a harem girl or something.

Tanya, don't you wonder where the heck kids get all that money to blow on toilet paper? Heck, the one house across the road from the high school in Manawa had enough toilet paper in their yard to keep my family wiping for a year!

I left my butt somewhere in the football field

We all went to the homecoming game Friday night. We dropped the kids off early, Angel #2 had to be there an hour before the game to get her band stuff organized. Hubs and I had every intention of getting there in time to see her play during halftime, but it was so warm and cozy in the house and so wet and cold at the football field, that by the time we forced ourselves to leave the house, we arrived with 10 minutes left of the 3rd quarter. I'm glad we weren't there for any longer, it was cold and I froze my butt off. Our team also got beat pretty badly, but we were there in time to see them score the only two touchdowns they made during the game, so at least they got some numbers on the board and didn't look totally trounced.

We had the kids get the toilet paper picked up in the yard after they got home from school on Friday - we wanted it done before it rained and we had a real mess on our hands. I then made the unpleasant discovery that our trees had better quality toilet paper than our bathrooms did. Not fair - there were a few rolls lying in the yard and I took them in for us to use - no sense wasting perfectly good toilet paper, especially since, as I said, it was softer than the stuff we already had. When the kids complained about my TP recycling, I told them the (absolutely true) story of when our house got TP'd when we were kids and my mom made us pull the paper out of the trees and she put it in a basket by the toilets so we could use it. At least I only recycled the stuff still on the rolls.

Angel #1 spent the night here last night. He'd come over on his motorcycle and by the time he was going to make the 1 hour trip home, it was really cold and getting dark. This is a bad time of year to be driving around in the dark - deer are in rut right now, and like a bunch of teenagers, their bodies are being controlled by their hormones and their brains are disengaged, so they run out into the road without caution. If you hit a 100+ lb deer with a motorcycle, you don't have much of a chance. So, I pulled the Mommy Card and made him stay the night here - it didn't take a whole lot of convincing. He's never lived in this house and we don't have any of his stuff here, so it was like he was just some random house guest spending the night. What an odd feeling to have your kid be company...except most company doesn't wrestle with WE, pick on the girls and kiss me goodnight. I miss having my little boy around.