Waddling around

We just got back from eating out at Denny's restaurant. We don't usually go out to eat, it's just too darn expensive, but Denny's had a special program tonight. Angels #2 & 4 along with other volunteers and olympians, shadowed the waitstaff at Denny's, taking orders and that sort of thing and in return, Denny's donated 20% of the checks and all of the tips to the special Olympics. The girls had fun being waitresses and, imo, food always tastes better when someone else makes it, so it was a successful night for all. It was fun chatting with others we knew that also were there for the spec olympics and the place was full when we left, so that's a good thing. The state olympics are next weekend on Oahu, so I hope our athletes have a good showing.

I ended up going to the horse expo with Angel #2 yesterday, hubby had to work, so he couldn't take her. She had a great time and, unlike her mother, knew what all the people giving seminars were actually talking about. I sat through lectures on horse nutrition, cowboy dressage, and matching the right bits to the right horse. There's a worlds foremost authority on bits - who knew? When the lectures involved showing pictures of the inside of horses mouths on a 40 ft screen in the front of the lecture hall, I took it as my cue to escape to the other room with the book I had the foresight to take along with me.

Words of Wisdom from Angel #4

"No matter how much of a tomboy you are, you're still going to have girl drama" Angel #4 telling me how she explained to her boy friend why she and another girl don't get along.

There's a horse expo this weekend. Now, that doesn't get me all worked up, but for Angel #2, who wants to go on to college and learn horse things, this is exciting stuff. I got her out of school early today so she could attend the first seminar of the weekend and tomorrow, she and hubby are going to spend the whole day there. Tomorrow, it's located in a town 40 miles away, so either hubby or I had to go with her and he lost the coin toss. He's better at that sort of thing anyway, when I get in crowds of people, I tend to disappear, whereas he's at his best. So, with him along, the Angel (who also tends to disappear in crowds) will have a better chance of meeting all the horse people on the island, which is a good thing if you're into horses, I guess.

I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree

Except when I shook the tree I got cherries instead of peaches - which is good since it was a cherry tree I was shaking...and I like cherries better than peaches anyway. Our cherry tree in the back hasn't been pruned or taken care of in ages, so it's full of dead branches and stuff, but I got enough cherries for some kind of dessert. After my cherry picking, I found a couple guava on the tree next to it, so I grabbed them, then realized the pineapples we had growing on the bush were ripe, so I picked those too. It was just a fruity kind of day today. We had the pineapple for dessert tonight, I'm going to do something with the cherries tomorrow and hubby ate the guavas for a snack.

We had a power outage tonight, but by the time we figured out what was going on and got the lanterns lit, it was back on again. We were out on the lanai when it went on and we can see the whole town from there. There was a definite line where you could see who had power and who didn't. When the power went on, we could see the street lights go back on one by one. It was kind of cool looking. We could also see the line of confused traffic backed up at the stop lights, we're definitely a society dependent on electricity.

'splain this one

I was emptying out the dishwasher this morning and pulled out half a plate. Yep, broken right down the middle. I'm thinking, okay, the plate crashed against another one in the washer or broke when someone was putting it in, I can deal. But, when I went to take the other half out of the dishwasher so it could join its twin in the garbage, I discovered there was none. The half plate was the only half there, and I couldn't find it any place else either. Of course, the inhabitants of this household all plead ignorance and claim they have no idea how/where/why there was half a broken plate in the dishwasher. Later this afternoon I stepped on a tiny shard of, what looked like, remnants of a broken plate and did that little jumpy dance you do when pain is shooting through the ball of your foot until I could pull the glass out. This brings me to the hypothesis that the plate was broken in the general area of the kitchen peninsula counter, but no closer to the culprit. Life's full of little mysteries.

how he spent his summer vacation

Hubby got back from his trip to Wisconsin last night and this afternoon we watched the videos he filmed of his time there. It started with his trip to the EAA, a hu-mungo air show he tries to attend whenever he can. He and his buddy made a sign advertising kisses for $1 and secretly stuck it on the side of the EAA booth where a woman was selling programs, then filmed people's reaction to the sign. The poor woman in the booth had no idea her programs for sale sign had been replaced with one selling kisses. Yeah, my husband's 11 years old.

The next part of the video was my family reunion - this is the 2nd year in a row that hubby's gone to my family reunion without me. The guy just loves my family and gets a total kick out of the reunion. It was great seeing family members I haven't seen since we moved down here, even if it was just on tape. My dad's twin brother and his family all came from Iowa - his 3 boys were the closest things to brothers I had growing up and it was great seeing them and their families. But, the tape really got me homesick and I'm going to see what I can do about making it myself next year and let hubby deal with getting the kids off to their first day of school. He also got a picture of my step-mother's tatoo. Yeah, my step-mother got a little moon tatoo on her arm - my dad's nickname is Moonie (his twin brother's is Sunshine, in case you were wondering - yes, really!) So, with all the kids in my family, our spouses and kids, Grandma was the first of us to get a tatoo. Who woulda thunk? Not me. When hubby told me someone in my immediate family got a tat and said it was the last person I would imagine, he was right, because it never even occured to me that it would be her. Sometimes people surprise you.

The last and longest part of the video was his time at Keller's Lake. You long-term readers may remember that back when we lived in Wisconsin, our whole family would volunteer at a day camp for mentally handicapped adults. We've really missed doing that and hubby extended his trip so he could be there last week. After watching the video, we were all pretty jealous of him. It was so great seeing all those happy familiar faces at the park. Maybe I'll have to squeeze Keller's Lake into my trip next year also.

Ambition

Did you ever have one of those days when you're really ambitious and clean or do really odd/extreme things? Today was that day for me. I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep, so was up and at 'em at 5:30 when I gave up and got out of bed. After that, things just got more and more out of hand. I baked bread, not so unusual, except I got over enthusiastic when I was adding flour and put in way too much and ended up tossing the whole mess in the garbage and started over again. I emptied out the flour bucket and decided to open a 100# bag I had in storage instead of using the stuff I'd already had in containers of more managable size. I had to transfer 100 pounds of flour into smaller containers, spilling plenty in the process. This led to transfering some rice into a different container, spilling some of that too. As long as I was in the transferring mood, I moved some Cream of Wheat from its box into a jar and organized my shelves. But that's not all, oh no. I washed my spice rack and sprayed the jars with Goo-Gone to get the mysterious sticky stuff off the covers and then, are you ready for this? I vacuumed the coffee maker. Trust me, you don't wanna know. I also organized all my stored bed linens and made chocolate chip cookies, among other things. I think I've gone over the ol' hill o'sanity and I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna get back. If you drive past the asylum some day and see a woman there polishing the buckles on her strait jacket, give her a little wave, because that would be me.

The Day the 80's Died

John Hughes, the man responsible for Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, among many other wonderful movies, died today. Sixteen Candles is one of my favorite movies of all time and I use lines like "the Donger need food" in regular conversation and it was one of John Cusacks first movies roles, so what's not to love? Anyway, the 80's wouldn't have been the 80's without John Hughes wonderful movies to go to on Saturday nights with your friends and I'm glad he shared his talents with the world.

Angel #2 has been in a cooking/baking frenzy since being on her diet. She had a friend over yesterday and they made puppy chow, sugar cookies, popcorn and supper for the family, all without eating any of it. It's some weird form of masochism that we're all benefitting from.