Dreams

The 13-yr-old and I were walking the shores of Lake Michigan after a phenomenal storm and picking up seashells (like those to the right). Only, I knew it was a strange occurrence because those are seashells. I'm pretty sure they call them that for a reason, and I don't ever recall picking up that large of shell in the Lake. (The dream shells were ocean size, I'm aware of the smaller mussel shells available from the Lake.)

I get a call on the cell from Jason telling me to meet him at some old guy's beach house. He's apparently worried about this guy who apparently lives down the pier from his family's 100-year-old hotel that is falling into the Lake due to the previously mentioned storm. The guy looks like an older Kelsey Grammer dressed like Newman (from Seinfeld) and he's refusing to come out of the hotel because his father is going to take him on a ride. I knew from my own sound dream logic (you know when you just know things) that his father was long dead.

That's where I woke up. Not getting to find out if we could coax crazy guy out from his doom.

It was one of those dreams that makes kind of no sense to anything happening in your real life, but leaves you with the feeling of importance that should you not heed the warning, bad things will happen. Great. Just what I need.

Randoms

From the guy behind me in the waiting room:

"So, you still got the cancer?"

Also, the evening receptionist (I assume that's what she was) was a food nazi!

Life

I spent the last week shuttling back and forth to Chicago.

My sister is fine. The surgeons were able to clean up the scars decently so they would heal better and not make young children scream and run away in horror. (They wouldn't anyway, but try telling the person who had a moose on her face that.)

It has proven itself easier to deal with something that happens to me than trying to keep another from slinking down the road of depression.

Tonight, the county fair!

Photo Contest!

The site: iHeartFaces.com.

The link:

The entry:

I just love how the sand covers a wet foot. I know, sick. Anyway, the foot belongs to my 11-year-old nephew.

So...

Because I was really stressed (worrying about my sister) and distracted (worrying about my nephew worrying about his parents), I didn't notice it was far past the moment my potholder needed replaced.

I burned the holy living crap out of my finger. The middle one on the right hand. The one that handles the "i" "k" and "," keys. So I sit here pecking those keys with the index finger instead. And mouse usage is the suck!

Still not as bad as her week has been going, so no big.

For the record, "2nd Skin Moist Burn Pads" turn your finger into a very odd white zombie finger thing. Sorry, no pics available. Also, I replaced my potholders.

My Sister's Day Was Worse Than My Day...

You know the situation. Phone rings at 3 am, and you think, "Am I ready to hear this news?" You know, cause it's always bad.

Well, my phone rang at 3 am, but there wasn't anybody there. Nor was the number available to be dialed back (*69). So, I blew it off as a wrong number.

This morning, my sister's father-in-law shows up with the delayed bad news.

My sister and her husband, while traveling back from their anniversary trip, had a run in with a moose. They're in the hospital, in serious but stable condition. Him with a fracture of the C-1 vertebrae, her with severe lacerations to her face and hands.

So, I spent the day calling family, and distracting her son from bad news. (I did tell him, but played video games with him when not calling.) My day was much better than waking up in another state, far away from friends and family, with pain and strangers telling you you'll need a bit of plastic surgery to repair your face, not totally sure your husband is OK.

We'll find out a better estimate of her hospital stay tomorrow, they hope. *sigh*

While I Was Googling The Other Day...

This is where I start a new tradition: posting the random search engine stuff that pops up when I do a legit search for something totally unrelated.

Really Bad Parenting Advice! The bully post had me in stitches!

Update: It occurs to me that my parents were so far ahead of this curve! They are gold medal winners in the Parent Olympics. They made me drink water out of a "thing what my dad called a hose (pretty sure lead content was higher than a toy made in China)," let me rollerskate (sad that word isn't in the spell check dictionary) and/or ride a bike without a helmet, get fresh air and sunshine without wearing sunscreen of any kind, scrapes and bruises did not ever warrant a trip to a medical facility (save broken bones, but I didn't break anything until after I was married) and I turned out OK anyway.*

*Disputed.

Randoms July 15

"Nothing says tasty like sweaty cookies."

Mistaken Identity

I've been on Jason's case for weeks asking him to pull the abundance of weeds that have started to litter my flower beds this year. Weeks!

He promised to get to it when we got back from vacation.

When we came back, they weren't so much weeds as misplanted flowers from the pots I got from family when I had surgery back in October.

Now, what I was hounding him to pull, I am hounding him to try to safely replant across the way in my planters. *Grin*




And, my lilies in the back have bloomed:

Bringing:

Wish Lists

So, in July, I try to start a running wish list for those so inclined as to purchase for me because I am a hard person to buy for, or so I've been told. Probably because I refuse to fill out those personality things that ask for stuff I'm interested in. Silly people!

So, I've decided to try to list my interests when possible. There, Mom, there!

In times past, I have answered the question "So, what do you want?" with smartass items so big they probably will never be a gift. Such as:

• Be a voice in a full length animated Disney feature.
• Meet [insert celebrity here]. Currently, Alton Brown tops this list with Peyton Manning being a close second.
• Travel to Greece, Egypt, back to Ireland, etc.
• Ability to give Jason his all time favorite wish list item - a ride in an F-16. You should have seen his face listening to Bill Engvall's and then my dad's experiences. Like a kid in a candy shop!
  

Those are just a few of the big item stuff on my list.

I suppose simple ideas are what these persons are asking for, so I probably should offer up something.

• Anything found on Alton Brown's site.
• A good deal of items found in Food Network kitchens.
• Any movie on my list of recently seen, furnished upon request.
• Anything with an elephant on it. (Probably should keep it to reasonable sizes.)
• Headphones that are comfortably flat.
  

I most likely will be adding things to this list in future. Late nights that evolve into days without sleep equals a very distracted brain. So, nothing new with me really.

Name Changes and the Late Night

Considering changing the name here to Apple's Orchard, not that my readership is big enough to matter, but the new name would be shorter to link to, and I'm all about laziness rights.

I'm also loving the late night thing. Keeps me distracted while Jason falls deep enough asleep to lay off the snoring a bit so I can fall asleep.

Today, I woke up not well. The vacation had caught up with me and my stomach was letting me know. Too much walking in sand and a happy dog jumping on me at our return led to cramps much like runner's pains and slight bruising in areas that will surely give my surgeon an ulcer the size of Kansas.

So, what do I decide to eat when I'm sick? Why, tuna salad on potato bread. Not the best of choices. And what was dinner later? Why, cheesy jerk chicken enchiladas! Probably a worse choice! I think I may need to buy stock in Tums to help pay for this! At least the 13 and 11-yr-olds liked the meals, even if I'll be dying inside for a few days. Shoulda gone with the pizza, as per the old family cure!

Also probably not a good choice, but oh so irresistible, was Food Network! I am such a fan! However, the choice to send Michael home instead of Debbie on The Next Food Network Star was irritating beyond belief! She freakin' didn't do her job! And then tried to play martyr! If she ends up winning, I will refuse to watch whatever show she's on.

Randoms - July 11 edition

Misheard of the day: "Open the Carpal Tunnels!" (Apparently, it wasn't anything near that in an episode of Johnny Test about Mole people.

Watched Eagle Eye (finally) then went to Cold Stone for a Banana Caramel Crunch (with strawberries) and in walks this middle-aged gentleman (roughly 45-ish) with about six or seven teen girls and quite loudly proclaims: "I love the Jonas Brothers, how 'bout you?" and only one of the girls was horrified by it. Speculations abound. (For the record, I really enjoyed the movie AND the ice cream.)

I've only been remembering snippets from my dreams lately: Last night, the plane I was on crashed and the life raft looked like a giant inflatable Schwan's truck. (Ice cream seems to be a theme.) The night before that: I just remember the voice over (a la Wonder Years) as I woke up, "And there I was, jewelry shopping at a flea market with my husband's ex-mistress."

Those dreams just drive me batty with the not knowing what the heck I'm remembering and all. The ones that scare me are the ones I do remember filled with seperation anxiety fears of my subconscious! That's scary psyche right there! I mean, at least my subconscious could give me eye candy to look at while freaking me out, right?

Power Outage And Grizzlies

We lost power last night at about midnight. As annoying as not being able to continue watching the GHI marathon on SyFy (and oh how I HATE that renaming) was, the freaking out pre-teen boys were more so! Not that I had planned to lose power, or I probably wouldn't have chosen programming that had the possibility to scare their socks off and require usage of a night light, which was impossible with no power, you see.

Worse yet, no power meant no fan for white noise. This was bad. You see, Jason's medication (or possibly the RA itself) causes him to channel a chainsaw (or a grizzly bear, or a grizzly holding a running chainsaw) through his nose. Whatever you want to call it, it is loud! If I wasn't already an insomniac, I most likely would be now. The snoring puts me in the precarious position of trying to deal with the cacophony (yes it is the proper word, you haven't heard it so don't judge) so as to allow him much needed sleep, saw my ears off as to allow my much needed sleep, or smothering him with his own pillow (most likely ending me in prison with other persons who snore worse). Dilemmas.

Dude!

Live RPG surgery!

All I Can Say Is WTH?

The New York Times has pre-released an interview with Justice Ginsburg that reveals more than she or anyone on the pro-choice side wanted:

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Eugenics?? Really?? I thought that went out with the Nazis! Now we find a USSC justice that feels the same way.

Wednesday Is A Bad Day To Return From Vacation

OK, I've decided not to catch up with the news cycle. It would totally harsh my mellow just getting back and all. Also, I apparently got a sunburn so bad, it fried my desktop! Now that's a burn! And, for those who know me, would know I never do anything so normal as simply burning. I burned under my shirt! That's right, normal people would put the sunblock on the exposed skin, but that would be, well, normal! The only way I possibly could not burn, (I am a very pale anemic person who tends to burn upon even thinking about going outside, much to the detriment of my "fresh air and sunshine" pimp of a father), is to wear a long-sleeve t-shirt. But somehow, the light reflections and other fractal occurrences worked to cook me in places I foolishly thought safe from flame-broiling. Creepier still, there is a slight face imprint on my chest. Like somebody put sunblock strategically on me while I slept, 'cept I didn't sleep. The other odd thing about my computer frying thing (yes, I know, I have a virtual labyrinth of a thought train station), is when the Geek Squad guy checked it out, there is somehow an extra hard drive in there. Where this came from, I have no idea. Jason didn't install it, or see it when he put in the graphics and network cards, or during the scheduled cleanings. Maybe I really am on the DHS watchlist, and the FBI snuck in and planted it for purposes of surveillance or info-sharing. (Cue Twilight Zone Theme!) (It occurs to me to tell you it was the only thing of 5 on the surge protector to fry.)

Alright, so, I spent the last week in North Carolina. (I could have informed you I was on vacation before I left, but then I'd have been riddled with paranoid thoughts about the wrong people knowing my house was empty. As is: a freaking second hard drive from nowhere! and my PC frying.) My parents moved there a few years ago, and we have spent as much time there as humanly possible. The Outer Banks are roughly an hour from them, so we answered the beckoning call of the ocean waves and wind!

Two boys in the car for the trip equals "He's edging me out of the car, OMG, I'm gonna die when the door comes open and I fall out because he's taking up too much space!!" among other even more dramatic yells from the back seat. The 13-year-old and 11-year-old nephew made the trip interesting, to say the least. I feel for parents of multiple children who deal with this all the time. Jason's parents had 3 boys and they didn't go on family vacations more than to visit other family, usually no more than 6 hours away, and this is why. My parents had a considerable larger amount of children and we went much farther places. My parents were saints!!!

Best unintentional semi-trailer door replacement: Baby Ruth truck:

"If you taste the peanut creamy, you're tired of appetite."

Best quote from Jason:

"You ruined the lane of least resistance, because I now have to resist you."

Pictures will be linked later. As soon as I work it all out. (Translation: remove all photographic evidence of my existence.)

Politics Don't Wait For My Vacation

So, Sarah Palin is stepping down as Governor of Alaska. My bet is she's just tired of the bullcrap that no sane person should be blamed for more adverse reactions than the polite rebuttals she gave. If someone made the kind of comments that crazies on both sides made about my children or those closely related to me, coroners would have to be called. Just saying.

If it comes out there's a scandal, then whatever. But, if she's just taking a break for a while, she really can't be blamed.

I wish she would have waited til I got back from vacation, though, so I could make a more detailed and possibly more thoughtful, though probably not, post.

Give 'em hell, Sarah!

Randoms

From the people who taught me to be a grammar Nazi:

Recyculate - A circulating cycle?

Antitoxicdents - The stuff that cleans toxins out of your foods?

Optitrician - Children's eye doc?