Today is a Good Day For...

It's raining.

Can I get an AMEN?

I am out of funds for the month...Darn this envelope system...So instead of doing rainy day shopping, I will:

1.  Clean house and light fall scented candles in every room.
2.  Drag fall decorations one by one out of the attic.  I hurt my darn back and don't dare carry down the box.
3.  Place my pumpkins all about in my freshly cleaned home.
4.  Make a giant crock pot of chili, enough to perhaps freeze for a busy day...Do any of you ever have chili left overs?  No matter how much I think I make, it all seems to get eaten within a few days.  My girls like to take it in a thermos for lunch.
5.  Bake a double batch of ginger cookies.  That should solidify that fall is in the air smell.  Besides, Aunt Flo is in for a visit and she loves ginger cookies.  She gets cranky when her needs aren't met, so hopefully that will help shut her up.
6.  Do a yoga and pilates workout.  I hurt my darn back a month ago moving a bed by myself at work that was older than Methuselah, and it didn't steer well.  I keep having random flare ups of debilitating left flank muscular pain.  I'm trying to build up my ab muscles and keep my hamstrings limber by doing plenty of core exercises.

Random fact:  I keep calling it my right flank, but it is clearly my left.  This comes from 15 years of flipping my right and left when charting on patients.  You know, their left is my right...Sadly, I have now decided to call my right my left.  It is quite embarrassing when I point at my brace my left flank and say, "The right side of my back is killing me."

But if that's the most embarrassing thing I do today, I will be doing great.

Do you know what Saturday was a great day for?

Kite flying!

I wish I had taken a closer up photo...And as you can see, we got our fence up, and flaked out on finishing out the top rail.

But then, if we had all of our "to dos" done, what would we do?

Well, perhaps we would find SOMETHING to do.

And by the way:  How beautiful is this girl?  For the first time she is truly encountering "mean girl" syndrome.  I am tempted to call certain girls by very bad names.  

But I'm the adult.  So I'm refraining.

For now.

What are your plans for Thursday?

P.S.  My dog is scared of thunder storms. Either that, or she senses Popcorn is.  We brought her in last night, knowing it was going to rain, and when it started lightning nearly nonstop she ran from room to room sniffing each of us, and finally went to sleep next to my 9 year old daughter's bed.  At least that kept Popcorn from climbing in bed with me, which is the normal response to thunder and lightning!

Boys

When my girls and I visited my folks a month or so ago, I reclaimed the "Middle Bedroom."  This bedroom is clearly MY bedroom, although Mom insists on referring to it as the "Middle Bedroom."  This could be due to the fact that Dawn, being the oldest did not have a bedroom as soon as she went to college.  Instead, her few remaining belongings were shifted to my room, and Paula was given what was formerly Dawn's room, but is now referred to as the "South Bedroom."  So, Paula clearly does not have a bedroom as she originally shared a room with Dawn until my folks built on, then Dawn got her own room (now known as the South Bedroom) and Paula and I shared my bedroom.  There was just entirely too much moving about for Paula to claim any particular bedroom as her own.

David's old bedroom isn't even a bedroom anymore.  It is now a sewing room.  There is not a trace of him to be found in there.  Not even the urine smell from when he decided to have his own bathroom.  After all, he had heard that some people had bathrooms for each of their children.  David, not to be deterred by the then logistics of one bathroom for six people built his very own bathroom.  In his closet.  Granted, it was just a large Folgers Coffee can, but since he had the correct anatomy, it worked just fine for him.  Until my mom decided that the urine smell was overpowering in his room and decided to get to the bottom of it.

Oh.  I'm laughing just thinking about how lovely that discovery must have been!

So.  Back to the original story.  I put my girls in the South Bedroom, and I gleefully dumped my belongings in MY bedroom.  Sadly, my mom has had the audacity to give the furniture to my brother.  And my sister Dawn, Queen of Organization, cleaned out the bedroom, so all I have left is one measly pair of Rustler jeans, a few t-shirts, and a nightgown.  Oh, and a pair of shorts that came from who knows where, but they are NOT the ratty old, falling apart acid washed cargo shorts that I placed in their 19 years ago!  In addition to that, I couldn't find my cheerleading camp indecently short wind shorts!

Oh, the humanity!  My family members are obviously lacking in respect for preserving MY bedroom as it was for all time.

*SIGH*

Oh, and that's not all!!  When it came time to ride horses with my darling daughter I couldn't even find my two pairs of socks I had left there for riding horses!  Granted they were a little on the thin side and they were from the 1990s.  But they fit, along with everything else I had left behind in the advent of a wardrobe emergency at my parents!  Those socks were the perfect length for boots.  I was a little discouraged to have to wear my dad's too big socks when I put on my boots.  Now I have to be bothered with actually packing a pair of socks for my boots when I visit my folks.

I swanee.  My life is just so complicated.

Alright.  So now on with my very important observation.  As I dropped my bag on the floor, and pulled my sunglasses off my head and dropped them on the bedside table, I noticed something strange...

Do you see it?  Do You?  Well, perhaps if you have boys it would not strike you at all as noteworthy.  However, I live a life of Liv Dolls and Littlest Pet Shop.  I do NOT live a life of shell casings, pellets and Marvel comic books. 

And THAT Dear Reader, was the entire point of this completely pointless post!

Aren't you glad you suffered through with me?

Children Obey Your Parents!

I was really a good child.

Truly.

I just feel the need to state that before I share with you the following, inspired by a post by Freckled Hen.

The year was 1993.  At least I think it was 1993.  I'm pretty sure it was, because I recall my sister Paula being at my house and I think that was the summer she stayed with my parents before she ran off to Vegas to get married.

Clearly she was a good child too...

So.  It was probably 1993.  I was 17 years old.  It was summer and I was going into my senior year of high school, which I was pretty sure made me the next thing down from Queen of the Universe.

We had recently had rain.

That is relevant.  I promise.

I don't know why I was going to town this particular summer night.  It might have been to go drag main, or hang out with my then boyfriend who always treated me like doo doo, but I was still going to change him and make him love me by allowing him to treat me bad...You know.  Classic teenage stupidity.  Only I knew what I was doing.  Just ask anyone.

This post is having entirely too many rabbit chases...

As I was leaving, my mom reviewed my curfew rules, and told me "Do not go to the river."

Why did she tell me not go to the river?  I had never gone to the river in my life.  Unless of course one counts the previous May when all of my senior friends were graduating and my friend Sabra and I crashed their party on graduation night.  I had planned a "sleepover" at Sabra's.  However, we were going to the party, and THEN to her house.  Her mom didn't believe in curfews as she did not want Sabra to have a wreck trying to get home before curfew...

I have no idea why she thought kids might drive fast trying to get home for curfew.  After all, I certainly never drag raced my mom's Ford Taurus as I was leaving town.

Every single Saturday.

Like clockwork, 11:43 would roll around.  I was supposed to be home by midnight, and considering I lived 26 miles from town, I had to leave by 11:30 if I was going to drive the "55 stay alive" speed limit.  However, I could never get all of my socializing done in the allotted time frame.

So I sped.

Just a teeny bit.

I would say, "Oh no!  I gotta go or I'm gonna miss curfew."  And I would dash through the Jack & Jill parking lot, leap into my car and drive the exact speed limit as I was leaving town.  I wouldn't want to get a ticket after all!

As I would leave town and pass the transport road, a group of boys in a pickup would pull up on my rear bumper and flash their lights at me.  The boys varied from week to week, but every week I would slow down to oblige them in pulling along side me, ostensibly to let them pass.  Then I would PUNCH IT!  Did you know that a 1992 Ford Taurus has a governor that tops out at 135 miles per hour?  Did you know that the boys who drove old 1970s model pickups had no such governor holding them back?  They eventually beat me every time.  And they nearly always had a spare boy to moon me out the back window as they blew by me.

Curse that governor.

Okay.  That was a big bunny chase.  We were talking about what a great kid I was.  And that my mom had told me not go to the river.

I pulled into town.  I remember it was late afternoon.  I have no idea why I was in town in the late afternoon.  I do know that I met up with a group of random kids in the high school parking lot.  They were all "friends" but most of them were only friends in the sense that all kids in a town with 1200 people and one stop light are friends.

"Hey Ang! (for some reason my classmates called me Ang, or AJ.)  Want to go to the river?  We're going floating!"

I thought about it for all of two seconds, and I jumped into Jason's pickup and off we went!  We parked the cars on the side of the road, pulled out a bunch of blow up floats and hiked our way down to the river.  I, of course was looking super cute and had on my nice leather loafers.  I carefully tucked my socks into them, shrugged at the soon to be river smelly state of my cute outfit and climbed onto a pink lounge float.

And off we floated!

I don't remember how far we went.  I do remember that getting back was a challenge as we did not have shoes.  We walked in the sandy river bottom as far as we could, but some places it was too deep to walk, or too rocky, or whatever.  Then we would get out and hike along in the reedy grass along the bank.

I hung out in town for a few hours until I was dry enough to get into my mom's nice Taurus and drive home.  I remember it wasn't even dark out when I walked in, called "Hi!  I'm home!"  and headed straight to the bathroom, skillfully avoiding any direct conversation with the parents...

And there was Paula.  I immediately began to tug off my clothes and prepared to get in the shower.  Naturally, I told her what we had done.  Because I am a terrible secret keeper, and she was handy. I told her the worst part was that the crotch of my underwear never did get dry...

I don't remember what she said.

But I'm sure it involved carefully chosen words of wisdom and some eye rolls.  Paula always was better at keeping her counsel than I am.  

I do remember that the reason we wanted to float the river was because it was actually moving.  You see, we had received a heavy rain.  I'm not sure if this is the right year, but I think it's the year that we had such heavy rains that I spent a good chunk of the summer helping Dad rebuild fence at all of the creek gaps.

So, we decided to float...Of course, what looks like calm little currents could have been deadly undertows.  I know that for a fact as two boys in our area had been floating a similar river in a similar situation and drowned just two years before.  Of course, none of that crossed my mind as a teenager.  However, I guess Mom must have raised three teenagers or been one herself, because she was suspicious that we may decide to go visit the river after a heavy rain.

Oh, and about the senior graduation party that Sabra and I crashed?  Well, it turns out that Dad decided we needed to gather and work cattle first thing the next morning.  They called Sabra's mom to tell me to come home.  This was before the days of cell phones, so Sabra's mom got in her car and drove up and down Main looking for us.

Only we weren't there.

Then, she drove her car to the bridge over the river and honked her horn and yelled and yelled for us.  Only we could not hear her as we were quite a ways down the river, and we had country music blasting from some guy's pickup.  She eventually convinced a kid named Eric to pull over and told him to come get me.

Eric was a prankster and came roaring into the camp saying, "Hey Andrea, your dad's looking for you."

I nearly had a heart attack right then and there.  After he picked himself up off the ground from laughing at me, he told me the truth.  Sabra and I loaded up in her car and headed back to town.  When we walked into her house her mom started talking, "Where have you been?  I've been looking all over for you two.  I parked on the bridge and honked and yelled and you never came.  Andrea's dad said she has to go home to work cattle.  Ohmygoodness you smell like camp fire.  Go take a shower before you head home and wash your hair."

And so I did and she nearly had a stroke before I left.

And I came home and went to bed and got up at the crack of dawn to gather and work cattle.

Maybe my parents were more clued in to my activities than I thought.

Oh, and one more thing.  I got the "Safe Driver" award my Senior year of high school.  I was nominated by Mrs. Mulberry because every time she saw me driving I ALWAYS had on a seat belt.  Of course that is totally true!  I didn't want to die a horrendous bloody death if I had an accident driving!

This post is entirely too long.  I will test whether you made it to the end with a brief Reader Survey:

What kind of kid were you?  Were you like me, really good on the surface with a streak of orneriness a mile wide?  Were you straight as an arrow with a secretly rebellious heart?  Or were you out and out wild and woolly?  Do tell!

My Castle Is Complete

I realize some of you may be new to my blog...Although, since nobody COMMENTS any more, it's hard to tell!  And yes, that is a shameless ploy for more comments.  Anyway, that is not the point.  The point is that if you've been with me since the very beginning, you realize that while my house may in fact look like a typical middle class home, it is in fact a castle.  Complete with scullery maid.  You can click here to learn all about my fabulous life in a castle.

My Grandmama Dolly passed in January.  My mom and her siblings separated her belongings among themselves, and my mom had asked if I wanted anything.  "I was always fascinated by those chairs with the lion head and feet."  As it turned out, those had already been laid claim to.  I philosophically shrugged and said, "never mind.  Those chairs were too majestic for my garage sale/hand me down/eclectic house decorations anyway."

Guess what?  My mom called me a while back and said the chairs may be coming available again.  "I WANT THEM!"  I shouted into the phone before she could finish her sentence.  You see, my grandparents had a somewhat eclectic decor themselves.  From green flocked wallpaper paired with gray paneling, to chairs with lion heads carved into them and velvet bullfighter pictures, they had a little bit of everything.  Everything to be found at "ESTATE sales" that is.  "ESTATE Sale" is the more elite form of a garage sale.  You see, an estate sale apparently occurs when the family of the dearly departed simply cannot decide who gets what, so they have a giant auction and split the profits, or since it's an ESTATE and therefore very hoity toity, I'm sure the profits are donated to charity...

It is obviously nothing like it's low brow counterparts where people actually take the stuff from their dearly departed family member and then have a sale out of their garage and pocket every bit of the cash for themselves.

As you can clearly see, my grandparents only had the most discriminating tastes, and such things as a chair made from steer hide and longhorn horns, would not be found at your average run of the mill garage sales.  Such treasures as these could only be found at the very exclusive ESTATE SALE.

Okay, now that I've edified you with my vast knowledge of garage versus ESTATE sales, I will now show you what my darling husband brought home to me after a weekend of dove hunting with his brothers.  Carefully duct taped in sheets and blankets to keep their pristine condition, naturally.  At first, I was almost certain he brought home the wrong chairs.  After all, the chairs of my memory were huge and clearly once belonged in a haunted castle.  How or where my Grandpa had the opportunity to visit an ESTATE sale at a haunted castle, I was never completely clear on.  However, I was certain that these must surely belong in one!

Now that I'm the very modest age of 35, these chairs have shrunk considerably!  They are no longer giant arm chairs where I feel much like Lily Tomlin surely felt in her giant rocker when she played Edith Ann.  Instead, they are just perfectly ordinary sized arm chairs, with an unusual black upholstery and lion heads carved in the arms, with claw feet.

Oh, well.  I love them.  I can still picture their exact spot in the front living room of my Grandmama's house. I will treasure them for that reason, along with my childhood fanciful thoughts.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, my girls found them immediately fanciful.  In fact Popcorn said, "Now we can have the scary chairs with the old haunted Raggedy Anne doll sit right here in this corner."

Well, I resent that statement.  You see, I had a dear friend make me this doll.  She is gifted at making folk art crafts, and when we moved away, she gave me the doll, along with a pillow that is embroidered with "Live in such a way that those who know you but don't know God come to know God because they know you."  Isn't that beautiful?  Studmuffin, however has refused to allow the doll to sit on our bed.  He thinks it looks like a voodoo doll.  I scoff and say it's supposed to be folk art.  I fear we will never agree on the topic.

Apparently my girls agree.

Dude Looks Like a Layeedeh! Or: What Depths Will I Go To Avoid Housework?

I got the girls some awesome clip in feathers for their hair...And I decided that my hair was pretty perfect for  them.  It seemed to bring out the inner rocker in me.  I was inspired for a fabulous post, and could hardly contain my excitement.  The only drawback was I could not indulge in my typical immediate gratification mindset, as I had to go to the dermatologist to determine that I was right and Studmuffin was wrong, and the mysterious lesions on my right arm and leg were not skin cancer...However, to prove myself right, I had to submit and actually GO to the doctor.  

*sigh*  

Being me is just so difficult sometimes.

The important thing to focus on is I was right and he was wrong, and although I had to get someone with an actual medical license to prove me right the end result was completely justifiable.

I decided to get mentally prepared for the following post by listening to some Aerosmith on my way to my dermatologist appointment Friday.  Because there is nothing like Aerosmith to get yourself in the mood to disrobe for a full body scan at the dermatologist!  (In a slightly unrelated note, I was quite exasperated with myself on my underwear choices that day, as I was allowed to leave that on.  And that's all I'm going to say about that.)

So, I was driving down the interstate, belting out "Love in an Elevator" when I glanced down and realized I was going 80...Well, I was looking for a trip down memory lane, and I confess to seldom driving below 85 when I was in my late teens and early twenties, but that was a bit much.  Even for me.  I decided to keep an eye on the speedometer as I rocked out.

Saturday I finally had time to get down to the serious business of a completely irreverent post, where I would undoubtedly embarrass myself.  Not as much as my Wonder Woman post, but nonetheless, I am sure there will be some serious eye rolling about this one.

Now, my initial thought was to take a few self portraits, but my children assured me I was not catching the full effect...

We decided to do a full concert/dress rehearsal scene.  Following are some photos from the shoot, and live concert I provided complete with edited lyrics so as not to taint my little girls brains with  such lyrics as Steven Tyler is wont to perform.  Photography is courtesy of Bookworm.  

Now, given our supreme likeness, I will refrain from telling you who is who in these photos, but I did include a few snapshots of the ACTUAL Stephen Tyler to give you a better appreciation of my amazing likeness to him.

However, I feel it's only fair that I tell you:

One of these dudes looks like a layeedeh.

And one of us has a big mouth...

Or maybe both of us.  

That is still up for debate.

And one of us has not washed their hair in three days, and in fact took it down from it's bun and shook their head and shoved some feathers in it.

But I will refrain from pointing any fingers about which of us may have a questionable hair routine.

Both of us own an abundance of scarves...And both of us have been known to borrow and loan scarves to our daughters.

Truly, truly, the parallels in our lives are just downright uncanny.

What a funky lady!

I understand if you completely wash your hands of me after this post.  

But if this does not garner some comments, I don't know what will!

Who Knew?

Wednesday my kids brought home their achievement test scores.  I had been eagerly awaiting them, as it has always been patently obvious to me that my children are nothing short of genius...However it's always nice to have my theories confirmed by an outside party.

I looked through a certain child's bag to find her scores, and found a handful of papers in various pouches and pockets of her bag and zipper binder...

I perused her test scores, not at all surprised to see she scored advanced in most areas.  However, I was surprised to peruse her schoolwork scores...

It seems this particular child is too intelligent to be bothered with showing math work.  And too incredibly brilliant to go back and check her work.  In fact she is so masterfully genius that she has a 74 average in math at this point.  I know what her average is because I totalled her homework scores and then divided them by 9, the number of papers she had turned in so far. 

Y'know.

Because applying math skills is handy that way.

I called her into the house where her father and I sat her down and discussed her schoolwork...

Side Note:  I had to calm her father down before we chatted with her.  You see, our schools were both on a seven point system, so 93-100 was an A, 85-92 a B, and 78-84 a C, with 70-77 a D, and below a 70 failing!  I pointed out that this school grades on the ten point scale, so thankfully she has a "C" at this point and not a "D."  Which was really a good thing, because I thought Studmuffin was going to stroke out when he thought his child had a "D."

"But did you see my test scores?"  she asked.

"Yes, I saw your test scores.  Achievement test scores don't get you scholarships in college!"  At this time her sister walked in the room...

"How are you going to get money for college?"  I asked the unsuspecting sister.  Fortunately for her, she has listened to my oft drilled in answer.

"I have to make all A's and get scholarships."

"That's right!  You have to get academic scholarships.  You are both incredibly smart.  There is no reason for you to not make straight A's.  If you decide to be lazy and not make A's and therefore not get scholarships, you will STILL go to college, but you will go through on student loans.  And then you will leave college with a mountain of debt to pay off."  I am so loving and gentle, no?

The child with the questionable math grade looked at her father and I and said in all earnestness, "Well, I could also get a scholarship in archery!"

*

!?

*!?%!*

Well, after we picked our jaws up off of the floor, Studmuffin informed her that while that may be possible, there probably aren't a lot of archery scholarships out there, so she better get her act together and keep her grades up.

Archery.

Who knew? 

More Pictures of Home

 I had so much to say about the 100+ photos I took at my parents last weekend, I decided to post some of them and share my thoughts.  Aren't you excited? 

I only have one beef with myself:  Why didn't Paula's family do pictures with my family?  Then we could prove that we were actually there behind the camera!

Anyhoo, let the dialogue begin...

Popcorn loves cats. And cats love her.  So much so that they are willing to go feed calves if it means another minute in her arms.  She is seldom without a cat if a cat is within reach.

 See what I mean?

 Two things about this picture:  

1.  I rotated it.  Why did blogger rotate it back?

2.  Is that my daughter in her dad's high school ball cap with a gun over her shoulder and a box of shells in her arms?

3.  How did this happen?

Yes.  That is three things.  I could not control myself.

I love this picture.  Minus the dead birds.  But I love it.  I love that my kids love their cousins and I love it that the dads in this picture are just overgrown children.

Apparently hunting near a farm pond is dirty business.  And apparently camo is not at all required to shoot dove when you are near one of the few sources of water in a drought.

 See the dove head at Kelsey's nose?  Yuck.

Aren't you glad I share all aspects of my life with you?

Why, hello Captain Morgan!

You teatotallers will not understand that comment.  

I'm okay with that.

However, I'm not at all sure that is how one spells tea totaller...teetotaler/tea totaler/I really don't know and am too lazy to look it up.

Dead Eye.  I love him.  I love this picture.  He looks so much like his dad.  And yet, I can see the resemblance to my brother in him too.  He is only 13 and he already passed my 5'8 frame.  I think he is going to be huge.

I tagged along one evening hunting.  I took pictures and "bird dogged" for Brent.

I lost three birds.  I discovered I was a little squeamish if the bird wasn't dead dead DEAD when I had to retrieve it.  Ick.

Again:  Aren't you glad to know the sordid details of my life?

This not so little lady was not at all sure what we were doing at HER watering hole.

Studmuffin is such a poser.  I love him for it.

Well, and because he's my husband and the father of my children and when I was pregnant he never let me scrub the tub as the fumes were bad for the baby and why did I ever start scrubbing it again???

Oklahoma is famous for sunrise and sunset.  Yet, I can never seem to capture the full beauty of it.

I think part of the beauty is the vast open spaces with flat land all around.

Anyway that's my theory.

See that bunch of trees?  They are one mile southeast of us.

Those trees were planted by my parents forty years ago.

They have lived in that very spot for forty five years.

I think.  The details are sketchy as I wasn't alive when they built that house.

But Dawn was.

She is oooooooolllld.

And she is dragging me along behind her.

She better fix whatever ails her before I get there.  She has twelve years to figure it out, and I'm counting on her.

Another photo that I rotated and blogger flipped back.

Studmuffin and Dead Eye with the second day's kill.

How gruesome is this picture?

I must really love my husband.

Oh, and he pointed out he still has few inches on Dead Eye.

For now.