Ding Dong Ditch - kitty cat style

WE came downstairs last night telling us he made a discovery. For the last week or so, he's been hearing a scratching at his bedroom door and, thinking it was his dog, he got up and opened the door to see no one there. But, last night, he heard the scratching, but the dog was already in his room, so he knew something nefarious was afoot. He waited right by the door til he heard the noise, then quickly opened the door and caught Fred, the cat, trying to run for cover. Yep, the cat was purposely tricking him into getting up and opening his door then hiding around the corner so he didn't know who was doing it. Fred is kind of a stinkbutt.

For the last couple days, I've been trying to build a website for our heating company. It's been slow going, not only because my computer is getting really bad and freezing up every few minutes, but I also don't know the slightest thing about building a website. I was working on it yesterday and ran into a problem. I called GoDaddy tech support for help, told the guy my issue and he went into our account to see what was going on. Then he said the words that made my stomach plummet and my heart stop beating. "Oh, that's scary." Seriously? Is that really something you want to hear your tech support guy say? He's suppose to be SUPPORTive, that's part of his name, not terror inducing. After he talked to some other tech support guys that also couldn't fix the problem, he had me download a completely different program and bypass the one that was giving me the problem. Things are working a bit better now, which is good, I thought for sure I broke our website for good.

In some amazing news: it was 50 (FIFTY!!!) degrees out today. Remember, this is January 11 in Wisconsin - not a place or time when 50 degrees is even relatively normal. Everyone was out and about, walking the sidewalks, visiting outside, it was simply amazing. It's been gorgeous like that all week, but today it peaked. Tonight we're back to our regularly scheduled winter and have winter storm warnings with 5-8 inches of snow expected. Looks like we'll have to get our shovels out this winter after all.

how did THAT slip my mind?

The fact that I didn't mention something else that happened Friday night either shows that I was really tired when I last posted or that my life is so bizarre at times that the craziest things can slip my mind.

During Friday nights shopping trip, I decided to do a little bra shopping while #4 and her friends were at the store. So, I'm in the fitting room, half naked, when my cell phone rings. I see that it's a call from home, so rather than ignore it, I decided to answer it in case it was an emergency. This is what I heard when I answered WE said: "Hi mom, I've got an emergency! (see how accurate my mom instincts are?) Diesel (the dog, in case you've forgotten) walked in some blue paint when he was outside and I didn't notice until he'd walked all over the place. There are blue footprints all over the kitchen floor." I told him that since I was half-naked in a fitting room at Gordmans, there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it and that he'd better get down on his hands and knees and start scrubbing the floor. Well, he did what he could, but since our kitchen is still in the remodeling stages, that lighting in there is pretty bad, so neither of us saw the extent of the damage until we got up on Saturday morning. Here's what apparently happened: A few weeks ago, a bucket of (really really) blue paint got dumped on the ground by a back corner of our deck. Since it wasn't a place where people commonly walk, we let it there to dry up so it could be dealt with later. Since the weather got cold shortly after that, instead of drying up, it appeared that the paint froze instead. The weather was in the 40's on Friday, thawing out the paint. Diesel investigated, got it all over his feet, walked around the deck, up the steps to the door, through the unheated entryway, into the house, through the kitchen and dining room and into the bathroom. I felt like Steve on Blue's Clue and had the irresistible urge to sing "Someone's Got a Letter" and figure out a mystery. Instead, I got all the paint scrubbed off the vinyl floor in the kitchen/dining room but there's nothing I can do about the blue footprints on the wood deck or the wood floor of the entryway. The kids say it adds 'character' to the house, but I think the house had more than enough character before the blue prints showed up.

Sunday, I had another busy driving day on the road. Right away in the morning, I had to drive hubs into Green Bay so he could catch his 9:30 am flight to Hawaii. I got home and had about 45 minutes to get ready for church, 20 miles away. We all stayed after church and had a great lunch/gabfest together until I had to leave around 1 so I could drop the kids off at home and head out once again for the 35 mile drive in the opposite direction to get Angel #2 from her weekend away. My poor little mini-van really burned up the miles this weekend.

there, away and back again

I had one of those "running around all day" days. Some friends wanted Angel #2 to spend the weekend at their house. They live over an hour away, so we met in a town in the middle for lunch and switched her out. So, I started at noon by leaving home and driving 35 miles west for lunch. After a wonderful lunch, I boogied out at 1:30 and headed back to the high school in our town to pick WE up for a doctor's appointment. The appointment was in a town 25 miles east of our house, so off we went. After the appointment and a few errands, we went back home and arrived at 4:45. I needed to be home before 5 because I promised I'd take Angel #4 and 2 friends shopping in a town about 10 miles away and the friends were done with basketball practice at 5. (keeping up so far?) So, before I had the chance to head out again, hubs called and said he needed me to pick up a furnace part for him...guess where? The town 35 miles away I had lunch in. I picked up the girls from basketball and told them we were going shopping in the big city instead, so off we went. I picked up hubs stuff, the girls had a good time shopping and we headed back towards home. The 3 girls were spending the night at someone else's house, so I dropped them off there, got home around 9pm and now I'm in my jammies relaxing from my day as chauffeur to the teens.

a wild and crazy new years eve

We cut loose at the Daydreamer household last night in honor of the new year approaching. It was an evening of drinking and debauchery with a bit of crazy talk thrown in. Yep, you guessed it, it was hot chocolate, popcorn and a marathon family game of Skip-Bo, and the crazy talk? Angel #2 spent the evening talking with goofy accents. We shut it down around 11:00 and I don't think anyone made it until midnight. I feel so fortunate that with a house full of teenagers, they were all content to spend what's supposed to be the biggest party night of the year with us playing card games.

We woke up this morning to wind and snow. It wasn't too bad, but the plows didn't get out until mid-morning, so we decided to skip the 35 mile drive to church and stay home this morning. We could use the extra time in bed sleeping off the affects of all that hot chocolate and junk food.

Yesterday, hubs and WE were going to finally get our mailbox set up. We've been living here since July, but since we have a post office box in town, we didn't really see a need to hurry up with the whole mailbox thing. Well, about 2 months ago, the guys got the post put in for the mailbox, but didn't get around to mounting the box on it. Yesterday, they were going to put up the box, but discovered they needed longer bolts, so the mailbox is, for some reason, sitting on the living room sofa. Pepper, the cat, is oddly attracted to the box and last night, we found her taking a nap in it, like a little, furry, Publishers Clearing House letter. This new found nap place of hers has the potential to scare the living bejeebers out of the mailman some day.

in which I lose my skirt in a parking lot

We had something special for Church on Sunday, so instead of going to our usual place Sunday morning, we met in a large hall with a lot of people from churches from the surrounding area. Anyway, during the lunch break, Angel #2 and I headed out to the parking lot to put our lunch leftovers back into the car and as we were coming back inside, I realized that it wasn't the seam from one of the skirts tiers that was rubbing against my thighs, but it was, in fact, the waistband. The elastic in the waistband had been slowly giving way, but it decided to give up the ghost entirely on Sunday afternoon, in a parking lot. Since I don't carry around one of those huge mom purse's that contain everything but the kitchen sink (though the bathroom sink IS there) I didn't have a safety pin and spent the rest of the afternoon hoiking my skirt up. Yes, I find it difficult to even go to church like a normal person.

We got a phone call from Angel #1 on Friday. It was great hearing his voice and, now that he's got a sort of military international go-phone, it's nice to know that we'll be able to talk to him occasionally while he's out there. He told me what he's missing out there and I'm in the process of putting together a care package for him full of beef jerky and peanut butter.

And now, in other breaking news. Angel #1 won't be my only international Angel. Angel #2 has decided to take a Spanish immersion course followed by a one month internship at a ranch in Uruguay. She's brushing up on her Spanish and is deciding what to pack so she's ready to head out on January 20th, a few days after her 18th birthday. I'm so excited for her and I'm sure she's going to have an awesome time down there. If she really likes it, she's considering staying down there, we'll see what happens I guess. It's always something.

Where did the time go?

First off, I want to thank you for your kind words, Jeannie, it's a little overwhelming if I think of my little boy in such a scary place, so I try not to think about it. Then, when I do think about it and start to feel helpless, I just think of those poor mothers who live there and are trying to raise their children in such horrible circumstances and it puts everything else into perspective.

On a cheerier note, I've been really painting up a storm lately. It all started a couple weeks ago when I decided that I'd been avoiding painting my kitchen long enough. I had intended to just do the trim on the walls, so I took out my 1 1/2 inch brush and got to work. Well, one thing led to another and I just kept going until I'd painted all my kitchen walls with that tiny little brush. It's now an awesome shade of turquoise. Well, after my walls looked so cool, my gross cabinets looked worse than ever. We'd taken the doors off the upper cabinets before we moved in because the previous owners had removed the ceiling and only replaced half of it before giving up. We took out the cabinets, ripped out the nasty looking boards they were putting up for the ceiling and got as far as hanging 2 sheets of drywall up. We put them on the north side of the room so we could replace the cabinets there, but never got around to putting the doors back, figuring it would be easier to paint them if they were off. BUT, I'd been avoiding the whole painting thing, so I had ugly yellow, doorless cabinets since July. Well, that's changed now. I sanded them down and put primer and 2 coats of paint on over the course of 3 days. By then, I was sick of painting for awhile, so only the upper cabinets got finished, the lower ones are still yellow while the uppers are this great shade of dark melony orangey-pink (salmon??). I retired from the painting business for a bit, but then hubs and I went to the REStore on Saturday. The REStore has got to be my new favorite place to shop. Saturday was 50% off day. We got upper cabinets for the laundry room, more linear feet than what I've currently got in my melony orangey-pink kitchen cabinets, all for under $20. Before we could hang them up though, I needed to get the laundry room painted. Someone who lived here at one time a long time ago, really loved the color pink, it looked like Pepto Bismol exploded in my laundry room. NOT attractive. I searched through my collection of random paint that's piled up in my basement. I found white for the ceiling and trim and a sage green color for the walls. It looks great, but after painting the room from top to bottom, then helping hubs hang the cabinets, I was pretty pooped out. Today, I put contact paper on the shelves and put all the laundry room stuff that had been sitting in boxes since we moved in onto their very own shelves. Old houses are cool, but they sure are short on storage space. But slowly my little castle is catching up to the 20th century (getting it up to the 21st is waaay beyond its capabilities).

grrrr

Just an FYI for the world's enlightenment: 1. Turn your phone off when you go to a concert. 2. If you don't turn off your phone, put it on vibrate or silent mode. 3. If you don't do the first two, if someone calls you during the concert, turn off the ringer and don't answer. 4. If you feel you have to answer, quietly say you're busy and you'll call back, don't say "what's up??" 5. If you're a complete idiot and do none of the above, the LEAST you could do is not visit during MY KID'S SOLO!!! Some people should be shot. /rant

Besides idiots on cell phones sitting behind me, Angel #4's concert was wonderful. Since she's on the list of what Angel #2 called The Overachievers, she got a lot of stage time, being in the band, the tonechimes group and the choir, where she had a small solo, we got to see a lot of her.

Angel #1 is currently in Kurdistan, at least he was the last we heard from him. Now that he's out of the country, he's no longer using his cell phone and he doesn't have a computer with him, so we'll just have to assume he's where he's supposed to be. He's using someone's phone to update on Facebook, which is why I know he was in Kurdistan yesterday. He called on Sunday, right before he left the States. He told us he was sitting on the runway, so we assumed he was talking to us from the plane. We didn't know why he could be on the phone during take-off, but figured he was on a military transport or something. Until a half hour later he was still talking. Turns out he was literally SITTING ON THE RUNWAY with his platoon waiting to get on a plane. #1 isn't a particularly chatty guy, so he didn't see the need to explain himself further.

Thanks for your encouraging words, Tanya. About the crying thing, you'd be surprised how tough you can be when you've got to be. I figured my crying would make things harder for him, so I sucked it up, you do what you've got to do. Now, we begin the countdown to when he comes back home. Seven months and counting!!