Too Much Perfection?

As I was driving to my parents' house this afternoon, I drove through one of the *very* nice neighborhoods in town. As I rounded a curve, I noticed that all the trees that canopy the road were covered in white. They'd been TP'd!
I stifled a chuckle and continued my drive. But just a short distance later, to my right, was a long driveway leading to a house hidden in some trees. Some very white trees. The house had been TP'd as well. And I must say, it was the best TP work I've ever seen. And that says a lot, because I've seen quite a few great instances of it!

I hated that I couldn't stop to take a photo, but there was a police officer driving behind me. Likely that he was surveying the handy work, too.

I continued on my path to my parents' house. Upon arriving, I noticed that their neighbors across the street had also been TP'd! By then I was dying laughing. I have no idea who was responsible for the great handiwork, but since the neighbor is a football coach for the private school here, I have no doubt that is what the connection is.

Here's the pic I managed to snap at my parents' house! This work is not nearly as good as the other one I saw, but it gives you an idea of what they did!

Too tired and lazy to blog tonight.


Sorry!

I'd like to issue a small warning to all parents out there of small children. Please remember how literal they are. I posted this on the wutz's blog, but I feel the reminder is an important one!

I told the wutz to put his chips on the table. Really, I was not expecting him to take me so damned seriously.

DH has begun some major home repairs. Primarily on the laundry room at this time. I am looking forward to the finished result. But for now, I'm just warily watching and helping by handing various tools when an order is barked at me.

I'll be back soon, I'm sure, to post a tally of injuries that will inevitably occur.

Updated to add a picture of Daddy's Little Helper


No injuries yet, but as always, the work has proven to be more time-consuming and more difficult than originally planned. I should expect that by now.

When God was tossing out traits to all His children, he must have thrown long and completely missed me when he was hurling out Patience.

I have none.

I have no time for patience. Seriously. I want everything done yesterday. I hate waiting. I hate going slow. I hate driving at a snail's pace behind someone that didn't turn out in front of me till s/he could see the whites of my eyes. I hate commercials. I hate that important dates on the calendar take forever to get here.

I could go on and on, but I really don't even have the patience to write more today.

It has been around for awhile, I guess, but I'm loving this song!

I love living on a farm. We have hundreds upon hundreds of acres of land that, though it is not ours, it is family land and we have free run of it. I don't have to worry about the wutz growing bored. There is plenty to do and see right outside our back door. It is wonderful knowing that the nearest neighbor is more than a half a mile away. Even better is the ability to have the horses, dogs, and various critters right outside the front (and back) door.

I could go on and on about everything I love out here, but that's not the point of this blog tonight.

No, this one is about the one thing here that I absolutely hate. The backhoe of woe. I loathe this massive yellow monster. Every time there is a death, it is fired up and brought out from beneath the farm's shop, to do the duty of digging a grave, no matter the size.

In the decade I've lived here, I've seen it dig graves for horses, goats, cattle, and even dogs. Some of them were mine. Some very recently.

Tonight the yellow beast was brought out again. This time to bury a poor little calf that was born with no hair and was, unfortunately, unable to thrive. I'd been pulling hard for the little thing ever since I heard the news, but he didn't make it.

I couldn't help but curse at that backhoe as I saw it being driven across the field.

I do hate that damned thing.

One of my coworkers is on vacation this week, so I am doing my work, plus hers. On top of that, my boss decided last week that we'd change the way we enter data into our database. This change must be retroactive for the past three years. I cannot begin to tell you the amount of data that contained, but I am happy to report that I got thousands upon thousands of records entered into the database in record time. I'm a freaking machine!

I completely finished all the work. I thought it would take at least a week. Did I get a thank you? No. Not even a gold star. I really wanted a gold star.

I worked my fingers to the bone and all I've got to show for it? Boney fingers.

According to Google, today is the first day of Fall. Admittedly, I don't keep up with these things, so I thank them for changing their banner to reflect this!

When I went outside today, though, I realized that it actually felt cooler. Gone was that sweltering humidity that we suffered through even last week. There was a light breeze and the temperature was in the 80's. Which is damned cool for us!

Welcome Fall!

I am still sick! This is getting crazy.

Last night I had a fever, along with chills, sore throat, headache... and now I've lost my voice. I sound like a frog.

I hate being sick.

I had to cancel on a wedding shower I was supposed to attend today. Seriously, I doubt anyone would be interested in listening to me cough, hack, and spread germs all over.

Blech!

We've been suffering a gas shortage this past week. Gas stations have all their pump handles covered in plastic bags. It was really frightening when I set out in search of fuel yesterday for my gas hog! I panicked as I drove from station to station, only to find each and every one completely out of fuel.

Then finally, I remembered an obscure section of town with a little tucked away gas station. I drove over there and they had gas! The only thing they had left was Premium, so I paid through the nose for it, but at least I was able to fill my tank.

Between DH and me, we use approximately $850 per month in fuel costs alone. We are absolutely dependent upon it to travel the distance between home and work. It is one of the large prices we pay to live in the middle of nowhere. I don't regret it, but there are times, like yesterday, when it makes me a little sick to my stomach!

I wish we, as Americans, were not so dependent upon fuel. I look forward to alternative energy sources. I hope the powers-that-be get with the program very very soon. We need it.

I'm a fan of warm weather. The South truly is the perfect place for me. But I do admit that I am beginning to look forward to Fall. For a variety of reasons.

The weather is just a touch cooler today. A frigid 87 degrees! And the grocery store stockboy came out of the storeroom today, while I was shopping, wheeling around a massive cargo of Halloween candy! Yum.

Then there is football season. How fantastic is that? Everytime I hear the Florida State Seminoles' Fight Song on the radio, I get a little swell of pride that I cannot even begin to put into words. I love football season!

However, out of all these wonderful things, the one I am the most excited about today? The Supernatural Season Premiere is tonight! Though several great TV shows have already started their season, this is the series that really heralds in the Fall TV Season for me. To say I'm excited is an understatement.

Yes, I know. I'm hopelessly pathetic. But Dean Winchester is so yummy I just do not care!

It is that time of year again.

LoveBug season.

I hate fucking lovebugs. [Pun intended]


They get on and into everything. The front of my Expedition is coated with their tiny black carcasses. I'll never be able to get it all off. It is disgusting.

And the way they fly through the air and land in your hair, on your shoulders, just anywhere. Too icky for words.

They also get in the car, in the house, in the barn. I hate hate hate them.

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm off to Lowe's to by a jumbo sized can of RAID.

I'm feeling kind of crummy today. I have a horrid sore throat. So, to spare my dear reader(s?), I'm not really going to make a post today.

Yes, this is a cop-out, I know. But it is either that or a TMI report on aches, pains, and bodily fluids. And NONE of us want that.


Also, I've got some things percolating in my head, I'll be back soon to jabber on about it, I'm sure.

We have seven dogs and I am beginning to think that perhaps the wutz is around them too much.





Colter loves it when we help him build a Tractor House, which is just a place for him to shove his tractor through a few times before he destroys it. This time, however, he needed a short little rest before continuing the massive path of destruction.




My Jeffers order arrived Friday. The wutz got to it before I did. It turns out the feed buckets were wutz-sized!

My thoughts and prayers are with those that are in the path of the Hurricane in Texas.

I hope you all have made it through the storm safely and that power and life will be returned to normal as soon as possible.

This morning, on my drive to work, I passed a gas station. The price per gallon was 3.89! Much higher than it was the previous day. I drove closer to town and there was a station filled with cars. The price was 3.66 there. So, I stopped and filled up. 84.03 worth of gas!

Now, I just heard that the gas stations around town have gone up to 4.39 per gallon. And they are limiting gas to 10 gallons per vehicle. We are no where near the path of Hurricane Ike. This is insane. There should be laws here regarding price gouging like this.

It just makes me so angry that the companies take advantage like that.

And we'll never forget.

Sunday, after Church, the wutz decided he'd walk a mile in Momma's shoes. He didn't quite get farther than a few feet, but it was still pretty darned cute!

I don't know how or why, but there is no cup on this planet that is wutz proof. He is able to crack open every single sort of lidded cup in some interesting way.

When he was a baby just cutting his first teeth, he learned that he could use them like a bottle opener to pry the lids off the disposable sippy cups. He'd laugh as the contents of said up were unceremoniously dumped on the floor.

Then he grew bored with prying the lids off. By then he had all his teeth in place and would gnaw on the sippy cup spouts until they were significantly cracked enough to be able to pour copious amounts of liquid onto the floor once more.

Next he mastered his fine motor skills. This meant that he could grip the sippy cup lids and twist them until the lid easily came off. Again there was a juice puddle on my floor.

Finally, I felt as if I had a handle on his tendencies to pour his juice rather than drink it. Until today.

After preschool we stopped at Chick-Fil-A and got him a Kids' Meal with a sweet tea in a styrofoam cup. We've never had an issue with it before. Until we were halfway home and I heard a soft pop. I turned my head to see a toddler-thumb sized hole in the side of the cup, which he was using to pour Sweet Tea onto the floorboard of my Expedition.

Grrrreat.

He has to stop this someday, right?

I would give my right arm to be able to sleep in on Mondays like I used to. But no. Oooh no. The wutz is an earlier riser. This morning he started waking up at 6:30am. He sleeps in bed with us, so he started shaking my shoulders demanding, "G'up! G'up, Momma!"

Noooooo!


I grabbed the remote and turned on Blue's Clues. That bought me about 10 minutes. Then I put on Cars, which we have DVRed for such occassions. That bought me another 20 minutes, but I was being kicked by little impatient feet at a rate of every thirty seconds or so.

Finally I caved and dragged my ass out of bed, while the wutz danced around merrily, having finally gotten his way.

~sigh~

10. "I was looking at the Sturgis schedule, and noticed that you had a beauty pageant, so I encouraged Cindy to compete. I told her [that] with a little luck, she could be the only woman to serve as both the First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip." --on the annual Miss Buffalo Chip Pageant, which features topless (and occasionally bottomless) contestants, Sturgis, South Dakota, Aug. 4, 2008

9. "We have a lot of work to do. It's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border." --referring to a border that does not exist, ABC News interview, July 21, 2008

8. "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don't expect to be a great communicator, I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need." --New York Times interview, July 13, 2008

7. "I will veto every single beer, um, bill with earmarks." --speaking at the National Small Business Summit, Washington, D.C., June 10, 2008

6. "We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies." --Kenner, Louisiana, June 3, 2008

5. "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should. I've got Greenspan's book." --as quoted in the Boston Globe, Dec. 17, 2007

4. "You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran? Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." --breaking into song after being asked at a VFW meeting about whether it was time to send a message to Iran, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, April 18, 2007

3. "I think -- I'll have my staff get to you. It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you." --after being asked how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own, interview with Politico, Las Cruces, N.M., Aug. 20, 2008

2. "Make it a hundred...That would be fine with me." --to a questioner who asked if he supported President Bush's vision for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for 50 years, Derry, New Hampshire, Jan. 3, 2008

1. "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c*nt." --to his wife, Cindy, after she playfully twirled his hair and said "You're getting a little thin up there," as reported in the book The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/johnmccain/a/top-10-mccain.htm

What is our world coming to? Seriously.


Yesterday I was at Wal-Mart [*gasp* I know. That rant will come later, I'm sure.] and I had to get dog food. Now, I'm not your typical dogfood consumer. I purchase dogfood in massive quantities. I know the various prices on each brand of dog food. I know how much each pound actually costs. I know the ingredients and what is good for my dogs and what is not.

But, what I did not know, apparently, was how to propertly tear off the little sticker they place on the 44 lb bags, so that the cashier can easily scan the item without either of us having to lift the bag.

Fortunately, the tag came with instructions printed on it.

Those instructions said (and I shit you not):

TEAR HEAR
V
V

Republican consultant Mike Murphy and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan were caught on a live mike ridiculing the choice of Sarah Palin.

Just for the record, I am NOT naked in my profile picture. I promise, I'm not.

I don't want to burst any bubbles or anything, but I'm wearing a strapless evening gown. Only you cannot see it, because the picture is hacked in half to make it small enough to use as an avatar.

On the way down to St. George Island for vacation, I stopped by Books-A-Million and purchased a copy of Twilight and New Moon by Stephenie Meyer. Twilight was recommended by another blogger. I devoured the first book of the four book series. Then I immediately moved onto the second novel. After I read the second one, my family was quite pleased because that was all I had purchased. Now I could actually spend time with everyone.

Wrong!

I found a small bookstore on the mainland and I purchased the third book, Eclipse.

I did take some time to jetski, as you've previously read. I also enjoyed time at the pool and sprawled out on the beach. But the entire time I was plotting when I could get back and flip more pages from each novel. I was obsessed.

On the way home I stopped by Books-A-Million again and purchased the final novel in the series - Breaking Dawn. It took me a day to finish. Yep. A day.

Then I found the first 264 pages of Midnight Sun on Stephenie's webpage. This fraction of the newest book is told from Edward's perspective from the first book.

After that I moved through the outtakes on her website. I'm all finished now and I'm left wanting more.

More more more.

Did I mention I was a tad obsessed? I haven't been this obsessed since Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy novels., which you should definitely take time to read as well! They are still my favorite novels, but the Twilight Saga is definitely the new runner up!

ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.






Is it over yet?