Fly Games

I was flying right along, getting an amazing amount of stuff done in the house when I noticed my messenger window blinking. I was standing right beside the computer, throwing stuff in the trashcan so I thought I'd click real quick. Why not? I'm ahead of schedule, I thought. The message read - Teri says: hurry up and get back will ya! Well, that sounded kind of important so I sat down at the desk. Half an hour later, I'm still sitting at the desk. Darn Martha Flyby and her Fly Games.

My daughter is home from work early today. She called around noon and said "We've finished early and Nicole is going to give me a ride home. Someone is just going to come back to feed this afternoon." So Nicole brought Leirin home and came in to check our Min Pin (Luna) out because she and her boyfriend are thinking they'd like a dog like that. So here I am, still in my pajama pants and dh's "Button your fly" XXL t-shirt with holes in it, my hair is just flopping around in the big pinchy comb thingy I have it piled up with, and my face hasn't seen make up in days. Granted, I'm 34 years old and I have 3 kids, I guess I can't be much better than I am, but I hadn't expected to feel so...frumpy? standing next to a girl that's - oh GOD - 14 YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME! And she had been shoveling horse poop all morning!

Life's not fair.

I need a nap.

Tonight's the night - NOT

I took the kids to my mom's for swimming today. For two hours I sat by the pool talking to my mom and grandma, enjoying the shade and the cooler weather. I needed the rest. Yesterday I had an idea to fix the wardrobe that sits in our livingroom and serves as a coat closet. With Shelley's help, a quick, and cheap, fix was planned and I was off and running.

Of course, having the wardrobe fixed and shelves added to the interior made it necessary to clean out a closet for the coats, which now had no home, because the wardrobe would function much more nicely as a storage pantry in the kitchen. The lack of wardrobe beside the television left a need for storage there, which our bedside tables filled nicely and without looking quite so massive coming in the front door as the wardrobe had. A small buffet that had hogged space at the end of the hall, moved to our bedroom to house things displaced by the loss of the nightstands with shelves underneath. A book case that has floated around to various parts of our home now serves as my bedside table and holds all my writing books. The corner cabinet I had to move to make room for the wardrobe-turned-pantry sits in the corner just beside the bookcase. My husband made out with a small pine chest on his side of the bed.

The wardrobe door was a simple fix. The amount of work it created in the process left my legs aching all day today...hence the need for resting them. I've hauled large pieces of furniture up or down those steps into the kitchen before, but never one very large one down and another fair sized cabinet up in the same day. I was tuckered out.

I headed home after a couple of hours because I still had to make the decision about what would be stored where in the kitchen. I'm pretty dang good at finding storage space when space is limited. Give me an abundance of storage space and my mind goes all loopy. It can't compute excess. So most of what we own to eat or cook with was sitting on the kitchen table.

The kids were spending the night with my mom and my husband had to work a double. The night was mine. I had the kitchen organized, and cleaned within a couple of hours. I mopped upstairs and decided to settle in for an evening to myself. I had bought highlighting stuff for my hair on my way home (yes, when I get in these moods, I go all out with it.), so I mixed up an amaretto sour and headed off to do my hair. Candles were ready to be lit, music was picked out, my book was sitting by the bed. I had 3 more hours and I planned to take advantage of it.

Fastforward...

My husband came home from work early and Jake is sitting in the other room playing on the playstation. He felt sick, he said, when he called me from Nany's to say he wanted to come home (which could be the truth because Leirin has also complained with a stomach ache all evening) I did manage to brush the highlights into my hair a little while ago. I've lit the candles in spite of them being here. It's not going to be exactly the evening I had planned, but I'll grab a little bit of time for myself at least.

We had a great time at the pool yesterday. In spite of swimming non-stop for 3 hours and being worn out, Emily and Jacob were still up at midnight...long past the time when my energy had been completely drained. How do they do that? I spent that 3 hours trying my best to grab that little bit of color I'm so desperate for. Wouldn't you know I've developed super human skin that's impervious to the sun. I'm still the same old shade of pale as when I left here yesterday. I keep telling myself this means I'll tan slowly without all the blistering and peeling in between, but it's a tad upsetting. After all these years, three hours in the sun should have fried me to a crisp. I look more like I've been cooked in a microwave...not brown on the outside and unappetizing. Woe is me.

We have another busy day ahead of us. This is the day we have to get the piano from my brother's house. My husband enlisted the help of our two burliest guys from work and we hope it will go quickly and smoothly. Of course that leaves me with plenty of rearranging work of my own to do here once we have a piano to squeeze in, but it will be worth the time spent. Leirin is getting mighty good at playing and she's excited about it. We all are really. I keep hoping that maybe having a piano will mean that I might be able to learn to play. I seriously doubt it. I'm not very musically inclined. My idea of making music is throwing something in the CD player and dancing around like an uncoordinated idiot.

We are going to my pop's today to help him with cleaning out his mom's old house. He closed on it last week and he's still hard at work trying to empty out all the things she had packed away. There was a lot of it too. My grandma was a pack rat. She's kept Reader's Digest magazines from the 60's, she never gave anything of my grandpa's away after he died, so my pop has essentially been trying to pack up two lives. It's taken a very long time to do it. Hopefully with the five of us there we can make some real headway today. It has to be emptied before it can be painted, and it REALLY needs painted. My grandma's idea of decorating was having everything in a shade of brown that didn't show dirt. The end result was a drab and dreary house with even brown curtains - the heavy lined kind that were never drawn because that would let in light which would show dust floating in the air. He's got a big job ahead of him but I think it's nothing a bit of paint and a few garbage trucks won't cure.

And so that brings me to this morning. I'm sitting here guzzling my coffee in hopes of waking up soon and working this kink out of my back I have from sleeping on the couch. I started out in my bed but moved to the livingroom around 2am because our bed was crowded. Emily couldn't sleep in her room last night because it smelled of the tung oil I had used to touch up her floor (LOVE the oil and wax finish btw...it looks like it did the day I finished it) so she ended up in our bed as Jake was sleeping on our couch. Rather than try to fight for my own spot in bed, I just went to the livingroom.

It's a miracle! It's 8:45 and my husband is awake. He's usually a sleep until noon kind of guy on Sundays. But we do have a lot to do today so I guess that's why he's up already. This looks promising. We may move that piano, help pop, and find time to cut grass today. Now if someone would just do my laundry while we are gone today.

It's been a pretty productive morning - especially for a Saturday. I'm taking the kids swimming at my mom's house. I have to remember that a promise to swim will get darn near anything out of them. Their rooms are clean and they've done everything from gather dirty dishes to sweep floors. Yep, definitely have to remember that one. I might just end up with a cleaner house and a tan to boot. That would be cool. It's been years since my lily white skin has seen any decent amount of sun. I can remember the days when I would wake up early to be out on the porch by 10 am. My supplies would be gathered quickly - cooking oil, a good book, spray bottle of water, sun glasses and various other entertain-myself-while-baking necessities. I held deepest tan contests with people I worked with at Ingles.

Yes, like Miss Cashier (I'd add a link if I had a clue how), I have stories of my own to tell, and some of them are doozies. Remind me at some point to tell the story of the sick guy in too short silky shorts and no undies shopping late one Saturday night for cold medicine. It takes no big stretch of the imagination to know how that one came out (literally). But that's another blog...

Back to tanning. This was a time when sun kissed skin was a glory (yes, ages and ages ago) and I miss it. After having my first baby and gaining 68 pounds in the middle of one of the hottest summers ever to be seen in our area, I lost a lot of my tolerance for sun worshiping. I can't take the heat. Anything over 75 degrees and I'm done for...give me a/c and a tall glass of lemonade. Over the last nearly 12 years I have gone from deep dark bring out the cherokee in me brown to a shade of pale that would make Casper giggle. I practically glow in the dark. Occasionally I think of fakin bacon at the tanning place but I can't afford it and forget the self tanners - my body screams painted on color with every one I've tried. I am about ready to give in and just go with the sun out by the pool, with tall lemonade in hand, just like the old days.

I'm willing to ignore the health hazzard warnings. I've not known the sun intimately in many many years and still I'm aging faster than I should be. My face is wrinkled and my boobs are sagging (which I know has nothing to do with the sun but still) I'm not looking too hot thesedays and changing my hair color can only offer so many thrills. I want color on my body. I don't care if my stretch marks do glow, at least my veins won't be so visible under my opalescent skin as to look like a road map. I want to look warm, inviting and sexy again. I want rich coffee with just a tad of cream coloring that brings out the green of my eyes, leaves me with beautiful highlights in my hair that didn't get there by my husband or the setting in of old age. I want color!

I've given up enough of my favorite unhealthy things already. ENOUGH! I'm trying to quit smoking, drink Diet Rite instead of Coke, I don't buy Little Debbie cakes anymore and practically all signs of my once-great body are gone. Do I have to look ghostly as well? I think not. I am ready to embrace the risk of sun for the immediate rewards to my mental state. So I'm headed to the pool. Throw an umbrella in my drink and call me a lobster. I'm gonna have a tan.

Well the gauntlet has been thrown, laid down, slapped across my face or whatever it is one does with a gauntlet. Teri has morphed back into Martha Fly By and she's on the move - and pointing her finger at me "Take that! she says.". Well, I accept your clean kitchen challenge Miss Martha, and I raise you one dog bath. But tomorrow...I only got 2 1/2 hours sleep last night. I don't know what was wrong with me. Could have been that 3 hour rest I had yesterday afternoon, but I don't know for sure. I've been tired, tired, TIRED these last couple of days. It's like I've been drugged or something.

Last night I cut the pieces of a brand new pattern apart and after cleaning house today, I'll be sewing. Look out! Crysty's firing up the sewing machine. I know just enough about sewing to be dangerous. But I figure if I can get a pair of comfy pants and practice my sewing skills in the process, that can't be too bad. At the very least I'll end up with something I can sleep in, and hopefully my fingers won't get stitched in the process. I have done that before.

Actually, I'm an OK sewer (is that spelled right? I get images of a big drain pipe filled with stinky stuff). Oh well, I'm ok at sewing. I know and understand the basics, I can piece a pattern together and know what almost all of those little triangles and stars mean. I haven't got to sew in many years, and had I had the chance to practice any over the years, I'm sure I'd be quite good at this point. I've had much to much going on though to allow any time for it. I've still continued to gather large amounts of cloth. I have 20 yards of a silk linen blend I bought on clearance for a dollar a yard last year. Occasionally I grab my grandma and we head out to Wal-Mart to check out material and patterns.

My grandma is an awesome person. She has the same beautiful white hair that her mom had, only she keeps hers short. At 76 (or is she 77 now?) she can run rings around me in the house and yard keeping areas. By the time I call her between 8:00 and 9:00 this morning, she will already have her laundry and ironing finished for the day. She will most likely have mopped her floors already and if it's dry enough, have a couple pairs of pants with a seam ripped out for reworking while she sits in the swing on her porch talking to her cat. I will still be desperately sucking down coffee in hopes of getting both my eyes to open completely. She's a marvel. She has taken the time to teach each of her grandchildren, and several of her great-grandchildren how to sew. She has given me and several of my cousins sewing machines of our own and without pushing, she makes sure we don't forget that we have been taught. It's a dying tradition, learning from the elders of a family. I hope I will be able to pass on something like that to my own grandchildren.

It was my great-grandma that taught me to crochet. We'd spend hours sitting in the little rocking chairs in her living room with her gentle voice patiently guiding my fingers, never getting aggravated when it took me forever to grasp the concept of her instructions. My grandma is very much like her. I can remember sitting at my grate-grandma's side as she brushed her long white hair. It was down to her waist and hung like long fine strands of fluffy cotton down her back to her hips. She would brush it gently, then roll it into a neat little ball at the nape of her neck, toss a few pins in to hold it, and she was ready for her day. At night it was twisted into a long, beautiful braid. Now that I'm going gray (underneath all that haircolor at least) I'm glad to know at least it will be a pretty white when it finally goes. I'm not quite ready to give in to it yet though.

I've just come back from dropping my cow girl off at the horse farm for the day. I'm going to have another cup of coffee and see if I can't match Miss Martha Fly By on kitchen cleaning today.

Well here I am again sitting at the computer counting minutes for hair color to process. I was completely incapable of tolerating the purple. This morning I was just about convinced I kinda almost liked the color last night's attempt had turned out to be. Then there was daylight - ultra revealing daylight that reached deep down to my scalp to pull that brilliant purple color from I don't know where. Not that purple undertone I had noticed last night. In the light of day it looked more like a color you're likely to pick out of a box of magic markers.

EEWWWW

So I'm going back to my old standby. Just call me Truffle. Maybe at some point I'll have enough money to have a professional highlighting job, but for the time being, I'm happy to settle for plain old brown minus the gray.

I took the kids to the library today after lunch. Jacob appears to be falling victim to the rainy day is perfect for napping syndrome and he decided he'd rather sit in the car to rest so I sat with him. I didn't care to be in the library under the flourescent lighting with my purple pony tail hanging out of my hat anyway. We gave the girls a time to come out and we sat back looking at the clouds (there was a break in the rain for about half an hour. It lasted until we got home and the rain started up again. After so many years of being severely short in rain I will never again complain about it. Not that I complained before...rainy days are a favorite of mine. The only bad thing about it is I am never caught up enough to do what I really want to do on rainy days - sprawl on the couch in something equally comfortable and slouchy and read or nap or both.

It just occurred to me that my lack of mentioning cigarettes has probably given Linda the (correct) impression that I have yet to quit smoking. I tried so hard and actually made some headway with quitting before I caved in to the stress of it all. Now I'm back to my same old habits and smoking totals. That's not to say I won't be trying to quit again soon, but for the moment, I have cigarettes and I'm smoking them. Maybe I will take up drinking instead...I like amaretto sours.

5 more minutes...

Hair color update

The color is pretty cool, but it's way different. It isn't Ronald McDonald red but it's pretty red, which I love, but there's a purple undertone that I'm not crazy about. Jake loves it. I'm not sure it's me. I'll live in it for a day or two and decide what to do. I have decided to go for a haircut soon though. The bad cut I paid for last week is just horrible. Maybe it's time for me to do something a bit shorter and with a little more personality.

Decisions, decisions...

Back again. I decided to celebrate my newly acquired wealth by coloring my hair and giving myself a facial. The dye has been applied and I've smothered my face with the gooey peel-off mask stuff. I love peel-off masks. There's something weirdly cool about pulling a layer of your face off.

I chose a new color for my hair "deep auburn brown". It's made by a different company than colors I usually use and boy is it strong. I was kind of excited to crack open the box and find an aromatique oil additive. My usual color has one of those and it smells yummy. This one stinks to high heaven. Aromastinky. The color is strong too, and it kind of stings. I went to the bathroom a minute ago to wipe a drip (it's also drippy) and I'm a little worried about the Ronald McDonald red glow developing on my head. Don't let this be another purple head disaster like that one time before, I whispered. I decided here at the computer is the best place for me to be because I have a clock on the screen and I can't see the red glow reflecting in the monitor if I turn the lights on.

The mask is starting to dry and make my face feel tight. I hope they put enough alpha hydroxy acid stuff in there to remove some of these wrinkles. I was reading this thing recently and it said that alpha hydroxy acid is just vitamin C. I wonder how many layers of skin a half dozen oranges and lemons are capable of removing. I bet I could throw a handful of salt in the mix and make a micro-dermabrasion recipe of my own. I should give this mask a chance to work before I plan a homemade face-lift though.

Micro-dermabrasion don't sound too bad. Not like face lift - that gives me pictures of cranes and other heavy equipment. Micro-dermabrasion don't sound any worse than a skinned knee. Wonder why it costs so much? What's the price of oranges these days?

5 more minutes...the color of the drip I just wiped off my neck is an odd purplish red color. I'm a little scared. Nothing like a little home beauty treatment to make life interesting. My mask isn't drying as fast as it needs to to be finished by the time I have to rinse my hair. I'll sure be disappointed if I have to wash it off instead of peeling it off. The peeling is 90% of the fun. Well, maybe it's more like 80% of it. Hearing the kids squeal is surely worth 20%.

1 more minute. Time to get ready to rinse. I'll know soon if I'll be eating a happy meal tomorrow...

Forgive me blogger for I've failed. It's been 13 days since my last blogging sesson...

After being practically scolded by Linda this morning for not blogging, then (only slightly) embarrassed when she asked if I was still mourning my lost britches, and the awesome day I've had, I decided today I do have much to say after all. As per the norm in this house, not much has happened the last two weeks, but there have been some interesting things here and there. Leirin started volunteering at the horse farm 3 days a week and is loving it. There's something really cool about driving up in the afternoon when it's quitting time for her and finding her hard at work in the pasture, with dozens of horses milling around (because she has the food) and seeing her absent-mindedly reach up to stroke the neck of each one she passes. She appears to have been doing this her entire lifetime.

She's good at it. And I'm proud of her.

Jake is at it again with the never ending twists on common illnesses. It was nearly a month ago that a mysterious rash a day after a spider bite sent us racing to the doctor's office only to have him tested for strep instead of diagnosed with a bite reaction. Today it was the spider bite (same one from a month ago) swelling up and looking all funky, that sent us back again, only to be told he apparently has a touch of poison oak or ivy that has got into his blood stream and is causing each bite he gets to do something wonky. Jake...he can't do anything the normal way (or cheap for that matter). My budget for his dentist visit was blown before we left the doctor's office, Emily's cleaning went out the window with the 50.00 bottle of lotion we are supposed to put on the two teenie patches of rash he has on his arms and the 40.00 bottle of steroid stuff.

It's been an awesome day though in spite of the headache I've now had for 4 stinkin days. Damn sweet potatoes. My husband is convinced it's a food allergy and the potatoes are the culprit. Too bad too because there's nothing like a sweet potato with a little butter and brown sugar on it.

As I wrote that just now I'm reminded that I had intended to blog yesterday but I ran out of time. The topic was to be the phrase "there's nothing like a ....". I have noticed lately that I make statements like that a lot. So yesterday when I was laying on my bed letting my mind wander in hopes of ignoring the headache, I gave some thought to the things that are truly unique. I say it so often it would seem like there's a lot of things I seem to feel that nothing in the world matches. I ended up coming up with a list of ten things that I think there's nothing else like it in the world.

1. Holding your firstborn for the first time.
2. The sound of a Harley.
3. A bunny's nose.
4. The feel of a newborn puppy's ears.
5. The scent of a baby's breath.
6. A field of morning glorys covered in dew.
7. Seeing your kids do something that makes them proud of themselves.
8. A cat's tail.
9. A really good book
10. Doing something new and doing it well.

And so number ten leads me to today's events. A month or so ago my husband agreed to give me 500.00 to invest in the stock market to help me learn how it works. The majority of his family have always worked in government jobs, so they've always owned stocks, gave stocks as gifts, etc. My husband has stocks left over from childhood and he has continued to invest because he was raised to believe you should do that and plan for your future. It was nothing like that in my family. My mom fed 6 people for 40.00 a week because it had to be that way. Extra money meant we didn't run out of toilet paper or have to use paper towels for napkins or toilet paper for kleenex. Oops, I'm wandering...back to the stock market...

It was evident early on that I'm more of a get rich quick personality while my husband is a buy and hold for long-term profit kind of guy. I see the distance between 1.95 and 2.00 as being a heck of a lot closer than 29.95 to 30. I like to do things now. He don't. Besides, I have to double my money a few times over, and do it quickly, if I'm to get new boobs before I'm too old and fonked up for them to do me good.

I subscribed to every reputable investment newsletter I could find. I read up on day trading. I've read business headlines each morning, taken notes and watched stock market television. Eight days ago I found a small stock I was interested in buying. I called our broker, had him take a look at it and I made my first stock purchase. The very next day I broke even (read: made enough to cover his commission) and I was proud of myself. As of this evening, my stock is up 1.30 per share and this afternoon the company declared a 1.75 per share dividend which means I'll get 131.00 and some change just because I was smart enough to buy their stock. I feel pretty smart, and very relieved that this venture into the stock market didn't go as poorly as my first dry run in economics class in high school where I was given twice the amount of money and was flat broke within two days.

The best part of my day came when my husband sold one of his stocks and bought mine.

Today, life is sweet.

ODE TO MY PANTS
This evening I had an idea to add a lower shelf beside my dryer. This would give me a convenient spot to store my large rugs and the basket of ironing while providing enough room underneath to slide the box of clean litter and the covered litter box underneath. the cats are loving the privacy and I'm enjoying the extra bit of organization it allowed. I can't explain why, exactly, the top of the dryer and the counter are still as cluttered as ever. Sometimes there is just no winning.

All the hard work was done. The leg supports and pretty brackets were on the shelf. I had planned what would be stored where. It was all coming together just perfectly. I knelt down on the floor so I wouldn't bang my head on the counter top above.

I don't know if I first heard my pants rip or felt the nail rip into my knee as I scooted forward to position the shelf. The heartache is definitely over the pants though. For 17 years I've worn these pants. Now before anyone goes figuring that I haven't gained 25 pounds since high school, I should explain about the pants. They've grown with me. The elastic has stretched as I have and the cotton has softened enough to gain a bit of stretch to it so they fit as loosely and comfortably now, as they did in 1986. They have aged well too. No one would ever guess these pants are older than my children.

I have been telling my husband that I'm going to have to start shopping at Target because they carry the Cherokee brand pants like these and boy have they ever been worth the money I paid for them. There's not a single loose stitch and not one repair has ever had to be made to them...you just don't buy quality like that often anymore. So, naturally, I'm devastated. My husband doesn't understand the love I have for these pants. Why, I'm not sure, since he still has that old Allman Bros t-shirt that has holes all in it. At least my pants still looked good.

I'm no clothes snob, that's for sure. I still have a pair of sweats (Jerzees) I bought in 1984. Of course by now they are a few inches too short and they have several holes in the legs and the waist band is non-existant. Comfy they are though so they stay. I go for comfort over looking good any day - every day, actually. I love the freedom of overalls and If I put a bra on I'm headed to a funeral. I do enjoy skirts but I even have a way of making them look slouchy. I like a long skirt knotted up on one side with a t-shirt. For ultimate comfort I like to wear a sarong and - what else - a t-shirt.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my kids have all preferred to be naked when they were younger. They come by it honest, I reckon. Jake still can't sleep with clothes on, refuses to wear underwear and doesn't even own a pair of socks that fit. Not that I prefer to be naked. I like being completely covered, but I want to be as comfortable as if I was naked. When I was in high school I had a sheet I would dress in, toga style, after I got out of the shower and I slept in my pop's old worn out t-shirts. It's all about comfort.

I'm just a slouch at heart.