Enchanted

Little girl lives in jeans, t-shirts (mostly black), mis-matched socks and fluorescent Converse sneakers. Recently she decided to change her hair color to something a bit more remarkable than mouse brown and decided auburn looked pretty good. So, off we go to Wallyworld, looking for auburn Miss Clairol or whatever. Turned out very nice.

Yesterday it was time for a touch-up. So we gathered up the hair-coloring paraphanalia and went to work. I had been watching “Out of Africa”, and when it was over “Enchanted” came on. Now, I’m not much interested in recent Disney movies, and this one had all the indications of being particularly annoying. But I needed LG to sit still and it fit the bill for that.

I got hooked.

As my blog title implies, I’m a sucker for a good Cinderella story.

Make that a Cinderella story. Good is gravy.

We finished the hair color job. Then we finished watching the movie. LG was totally engrossed in the movie.

I was totally engrossed in LG.

She’s beautiful. Sophisticated auburn, mouse brown…

Enchanting.

 

What happens next?

Gee, I wish I knew.

Anybody wanna buy a house?

Hubby is working his hiney off….and will be receiving a 10% pay cut starting July 1.

Wubby gets a good lead on a job and discovers that you can get booted if you don’t follow through. Duh!

Baby girl doesn’t do her project, the teacher isn’t concerned, and even if she needed to go to summer school, there isn’t any because, now that we have the education lottery, there isn’t enough money to fund summer school.

Where can I find blueprints for building an ark? Wait…I know this one. Genesis.

What is the air speed velocity of an un-laden swallow? And before you ask, I don’t know if it’s African or European.

 

some e-mail humor

Last week I took out an ad in the local fish-wrap / bird-cage liner, er, hometown paper, to sell something. Did the whole thing online, and once everything was finalized I got a verification e-mail. Here it is:

This email is to acknowledge your recent order with the Winston Salem Journal & Journalnow.com.

Order Confirmation Number: 0001314835

Ad Type: CLS Liner

Order Price: $28.00

Ad Run Schedule(s):

14 day(s) beginning on 3/11/09 in

WSJ Winston-Salem Jn (Merchandise:Musical)

30 day(s) beginning on 3/11/09 in

WSJ ONLINE (Merchandise:Musical)

Thanks for choosing us as your adverister!

“ADVERISTER”???

I assumed this was an auto-reply, but it didn’t say so anywhere, and I was feeling kind of snarky, so I replied to it:

“Thanks for choosing us as your adverister!”

Could you use a proofreader? I’m available.

And I forgot about it….until, this:

Hello,

I don’t see a job posting for a proof reader but you can always check our website and look under Careers.

Thank you,

Bxxxxxx

I came pretty close to falling out of my chair laughing. There was actually a person on the other end of that e-mail. Now I felt bad:

LOL–I was referring to “adverister” as opposed to advertiser!!

But thanks for the tip. I need to find a job and might be interested in working for the media.

This made my day! Thank you,

Seems it got a laugh out of her too:

Oh NO….I’ll definitely pass it along.

We’re also advertisers on a virtual job fair. On our website, if you hover over the Jobs link near top of our main page, you’ll see a link to the  Virtual Job Fair.

It made my day too!!!

Thanks so much!

Bxxxxx

Moral #1: It really doesn’t take much to make someone’s day, even when you aren’t really trying.

Moral #2: Doesn’t anyone know how to spell anymore?

 

It’s a zoo out there

Mmmmmmm….Sonic!

No, you can’t have any.

Please, no photographs…just look at my hair!

He thinks he’s in stealth mode…

No, we’re not siamese twins, it just looks that way.

Keep arms and legs inside the ride at all times!

Feed me!

Drunk again!

…and in here too!

My brother Buddy the dog is here for a visit this week. He went shopping with me this morning and is the best companion ever. Not that I don’t love my two dawgs, Duffy and GiGi the Land Shark, but Buddy has much better car manners and is perfectly content to sit in the back seat and snooze, unless I go to a bank or pharmacy drive-thru at which time he requests a dog treat from the magic drawer.

So, for the moment we are home to 3 dog and 3 cats. They are fed twice a day, all at the same time so the dogs won’t eat the cat food and vice versa. And GiGi is very territorial and will bite anyone or anything that messes with her while she’s eating, so it’s better if they’re all involved with their own meals and not trying to steal hers.

Today is Wubby’s birthday. He’s 19. Hard for me to believe but there it is, undeniably true. He’s out this evening, took a friend to karate class and is job hunting until class is over, at which time he will take friend home. Community college seems to working out much better.

Little girl had her last exam today for 1st semester of 9th grade, so she’s off from school until next Wednesday. We went by the barn this afternoon to check on Natasha. It’s cold here, and getting colder by the second.

Finished the assignments early for the first chapter in Chemistry class and turned everything in, took my test. I think I could get used to online school. Now it’s time to finish up prep work for next week….I’m going to Cielo!!

Hoping that the house fairy will come and finish moving and storing and whatever so we can feel completely at home here and get the other house ready to lease or put on the market. Strangely enough the housing market around here is in relatively decent shape compared to the country at large, although I’m not sure why.

It feels like I’ve been living in an emotional zoo for over a month and the walls are closing in a little. Moving…not exactly fun, but not horrible either. Just draining, going through 20 years of our stuff, several years of my mom’s stuff; getting Wubby moved from Greensboro back over here, re-enrolled in college; trying to prepare for the work we’re doing next week in the Dominican Republic. No wonder my hair was so grey!

I’m giving myself permission to do absolutely nothing pressing for the rest of the evening. Instead, I’ll maybe sip a glass of wine and consume some birthday cake. Watch a movie. Just chill.

Buddy is feeling a bit stressed and is ready for his mommy to come home. He started shredding toilet paper all over the house this afternoon.

He’s probably had enough of the zoo, too.

 

Can someone trace this post and tell me where I live??

We are living in two separate worlds.

Actually it’s two separate houses, a mile apart. Most of the major necessities of life are at the other house, EXCEPT for our beds and the cable / phone / internet connection, which will move on Tuesday morning.

I’ve done some ill-advised things before, but moving during the holidays….what was I thinking????

Well, for one thing, Wubby would be home from college and I could enlist his help in loading and unloading boxes, etc. Then I remembered, Wubby lives the comic strip Zits. So much for that idea.

It’s December 14. Do we have a tree up? No. Have we done what little bit of shopping we plan to do? No. Christmas cards? Are you kidding…and besides, I got these nifty labels so all I have to do is make a spreadsheet of names and addresses, mail merge it and print mailing labels, plus print return address labels with the new address. Isn’t that a great idea? I thought so. Maybe I’ll get to it after the holidays.

I used to work with someone who loved Christmas so much, she would go shopping on December 26, buy bunches of decorations on sale, decorate her house some more, and have an after-Christmas party. That idea is looking really good too.

My piano is at the other house, as are the music cabinet and the music. I’m playing next Sunday and need to practice. Thought about it this afternoon, then opted for a nap here. We played three piano stuff this morning and it was fun. Three people, three pianos. Even better than the two piano, four pianists thing we did two weeks ago.

Anyway, we absolutely MUST get ourselves settled into one place this week. Or I’ll be settled in one place, behind the glass doors, staring aimlessly and drooling.

Alecto gave me this little writing assignment. Gotta read the story first, but I’ll throw something into the mix. Looks like fun.

 

Huh?

So the local-yokel minor league baseball team is building a new stadium, which doesn’t make much sense to me because when I’ve been to lokal-yokel baseball games the old staduim had plenty of empty seats. But, whatever.

The old baseball team name was the Winston-Salem Warthogs. I think they were named warthog about the same time as the North Carolina Zoo acquired a couple of warthogs. The mascot’s name was Wally the Warthog, and he was darned cute. But all good things must come to an end, and so it is with Wally.

The new owner of the baseball team, who is also involved in the development of the new stadium, also owns a company that sells bottled water, Primo. He used to own Blue Rhino, a propane tank exchange / refill thing. He sold that company before he bought the baseball team. There was a contest to decide the new name for the baseball team, and there were several pretty good ideas. Since Wally was headed for extinction anyway, we thought that maybe we’d get the Rhinos and maybe Wally’s suit could be reused; just remove his tusks and add a rhino horn.

But we didn’t get a Rhino.

There were four choices. The losing three were:  Racers, Aviators, and Wall-Bangers.

Nascar is big around here, a major employer in the podunk town we live closest too, thus the Racers.

Piedmont Airlines was founded here, thus the Aviators.

Wall-Bangers? Not a clue.

So anyway, the new name was announced yesterday amid much to-do-ing. And here it is:

The DASH.

Huh?

Yep, our new baseball team is named for the hyphen between Winston and Salem.

Can’t wait to see the mascot. The logo is a mean baseball. Go figure.

We had a few name choices around here that wouldn’t have made it into the naming contest, but we thought were appropriate none the less, given the owner’s new business: The Water Boys or the “Primo” Donnas (Dons?)

Whatever.

Major topic change:

The movers are coming tomorrow afternoon to move the heavy stuff from here to the other house, and we are totally unprepared. Procrastination to the nth degree.

Like I said up there, all good things must come to an end, and it’s time to move.

Is there a moving fairy?? If so, could someone send her our way, please? Like, NOW??

 

diversionary tactics

I am tired. Part of it is fibromyalgia, but there’s more to it than just the physical and mental tiredness that is fibro’s calling card.

Maybe weary is a better word. This political season has been worrisome and wearisome. The economic situation is worrisome and wearisome. It’s all we hear about and it’s a mess and it makes me so angry, and there really is no platform for people like me to express our frustrations other than here in blog-world, and I don’t wanna blog about it today.

So, here are some diversions I’ve been using.

I’ve been watching old movies. This morning I watched “Three Came Home” about allied civilians kept in Japanese prison camps during WWII. Good movie that poignantly expressed what is really important during a crisis: love, family, friendship, trust, character.

Then there was “A Face in the Crowd” starring our local TV hero, Andy Griffith. An excellent movie, but the parallels between Lonesome Rhodes and so many of our self-absorbed Hollywod elite entertainers and slimy politicians government officials was, well, frightening. Once the political season is over I plan to analyze that movie with college son. Sounds like fun.

And I had no idea that “In the Good Old Summertime” was “The Shop Around the Corner” is “You’ve Got Mail.”

I’m knitting another top-down sweater, and I made up the design myself. This one is pink, will have a sort of sweetheart neck, 3/4 length sleeves. The bottom of the sweater and the sleeves will have a simple lace pattern. It had to be a simple lace pattern; I’m having a hard time remembering and 8-stitch, 6-row pattern. A complicated pattern would be impossible. I’m making the sweater out of cheap yarn. If it turns out, I may splurge and get some pretty stuff from the fancy yarn store and make another one.

I’ve been trying to find a book to read but concentration being what it is (non-existent) I’m not having much luck there. StuffMart had John Adams in paperback so I might pick that up and give it a whirl.

Our student ministry at church is responsible for an annual prayer service during Advent. Last week I spent time planning out that service. Much fun! There’s drama, music, prayer. I wrote some of it, and edited other pieces to fit what we want, and picked out music. Then arranged music, something else I’ve never done before. Found a trial version of some software to use and used the bloody-nose method to figure out how to make it bend to my will! Help files are for sissies!!

Student ministry is also publishing a cookbook to raise funds for next summer’s trip to Cielo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Several of us are typing recipes. There’s some fun!

I toyed with moving the blog to another platform, but I’m really not in the proper frame of mind to learn another blogging method.

And for now, I’m planning (and dreaming a little) about being in Cielo myself in January.

 

100 things

Well, CG challenged me to name 100 things growing in our little subdivision. Don’t know if I got 100 or not, but found all of these pretty quickly.

maple
oak
poplar
pine
cedar
walnut
pear
apple
dogwood
elm
cherry
willow
mimosa
birch
locust
sumac
magnolia
bermuda grass
fescue
crab
alfalfa
clover
wild violet
dandelion
chickweed
wild strawberry
pokeberry
poison ivy
virginia creeper
moss
lichen
camelia
azalea
boxwood
crepe myrtle
juniper
rose of sharon
hydrangea
holly
iris
lily
rose
hosta
lariope
buttercup
candytuft
wild pansy
primrose
daffodil
black-eyed susan
grasshopper weed
queen anne’s lace
chicory
honeysuckle
blackberry
trumpet vine
morning glory
wisteria
daisy
mint
mushrooms
forsythia redbud
kudzu (EVERYBODY has this!)

Then we started thinking about the birds and wild animals that we see around here.

squirrel
chipmunk
rabbit
field mouse
mole
snakes
turtle
raccoon
opossum
rat
fox
deer
wild turkey
blackbird
robin
cardinal
goldfinch
bluebird
blue jay
sparrow
wren
woodpecker
hummingbird
crow
hawk
buzzard
starling
dove
wild geese
thrush
grey heron (or crane or something)
barn swallow
hoot owl
screech owl

We live in a sub-division that used to be more rural than it is now. Development keeps getting closer and closer. And we still see this many plants and wild critters. Not too bad.

 

Lost in the mountains

We’re hiding in the mountains this week, somewhere on the Ashe / Wautauga County line. There’s a creek that runs next to the house. We’re surrounded by wildflowers, butterfly bushes, and…BUTTERFLIES! Hundreds of them. We’ve used sugar water to make friends with them; then they go back to the bushes. At night they hide in the trees so that, the next morning, they can float down to the flowers to spread their wings and dry out before beginning another day sipping from the blossoms.

Interesting thing about the butterflies: when you see hundreds of them from a distance of just a few feet, they all look the same, and they all look perfect and beautiful. When you look closer though, you see the evidence of their daily struggles: ragged wings, missing tails. They live a hard life, these butterflies. But, from a distance or at close range, they’re still beautiful despite their imperfections.

Kinda like people.

Today we tried to locate Elk Knob State Park. We were not successful. It’s a new park, somewhere off of Meat Camp Road. Don’t you love it?? Actually we did locate what is supposed to be the entrance to the park but it was roped off, for some reason. Anyway, we passed it by and continued on Meat Camp until it dead-ended on some other road, where we took a right. Seemed like a good idea, and it was because we eventually came back into NC194 that leads right back to where we’re staying, sort of. We kept going until we found Lansing. Interesting place….drive faster, I hear banjo music.

Of course, we didn’t bring a map. We don’t need no stinkin’ map! Continued following NC194 North, thinking we were headed for Jefferson. Lots of Christmas tree farms, cows, horses, goats, but no Jefferson. Then we hit a place called Sturgills and I recognized where we were, sort of. A couple of miles later we crossed over into Virginia and I knew exactly where we were…..about 25 miles north of Jefferson. Should have gone south back at Lansing. Oh, well. It was fun anyway. We listened to redneck country music on the iPod, told stupid jokes and laughed until it hurt.

We found Jefferson, too. And found our way back home to the mountain hideout.

Now it’s dinner time, ham sammiches for the lot of us. The butterflies are all still busy with their all-day feasting. I caught a little toad and Wubby and I played with it before we let it go. There’s tea steeping in the teapot I found for $8 in an antique shop in Boone on Sunday. The ruby-throated hummingbird that lives here should be making his evening appearance soon. I plan to have the camera ready, but if I don’t catch him that’s ok. We haven’t had any hard-core plans for this week, other than a scheduled trip to the Fresco churches tomorrow to meet Wubby’s beloved, who will be spending the rest of the week here with us.

Just wandering in the mountains, lost and at the same time, found.

 

of summer camps and contractors

(The video is a spoof on a series of videos called ‘Carter the Church Assistant’, a hit from last year and this year’s Centrifuge camp. Some of our kids put this together; the church staff willingly participated, bless their hearts. And the star of the show…well, he’s a friend of mine.)

I have this theory. Actually it’s two theories on potential income-producing ventures. The first one: summer camp for adults only. Picture it. Sleeping in dorm rooms where you can stay up giggling ’til all hours of the morning. Complaining about the yukky camp food and pigging out on donuts and trail mix. Dividing up into teams and participating in team-building activities…or not. Playing silly games involving water, shaving cream, relay races, baby food and frisbees. Soccer. Volleyball. Swimming. Canoeing. Horseback riding.

In short, a place where an adult can be a kid for a week.

I’ve been going to Fuge for 4 years now as a chaperone. Fuge is a Christian summer camp experience for teens and is just way too much fun. Sometimes being a chaperone isn’t as much fun, like this year when we had two kids in the emergency room at two different hospitals the first evening. One had an injury to his hand when it was in the way of a slamming door. The other became very ill very quickly and had to be taken to the hospital via ambulance. The responsibilities of being a grown-up, scary stuff.

That’s why I think summer camp for grown-ups would be a hit.

Here’s the other theory: I truly believe that someone with a contractor’s license who will do a good job, in a timely manner, could make a decent living. I remember when my parents built their house and what a nightmare it was. Constant delays, miscommunications (a polite way to say….outright lies), broken promises, yak yak yak.

We contracted to have some work done on our house. Contract was signed in May, work to be done within 6-8 weeks. At first, work was starting the week of July 7. But that didn’t happen. Then it was scheduled to begin last Friday. Hubby was going to camp with us and we could have used him. But he didn’t go because they were going to start working on the house before we got home from camp on Saturday.

But that didn’t happen either. So, work was going to start Monday. Got a call Sunday night. Not coming on Monday. Got another call Monday night. They would be here first thing Tuesday morning. Got yet another call 30 minutes later. They wouldn’t be here first thing Tuesday morning.

My son leaves for college August 13. Maybe they can start working on the house after we get him settled in the dorm. But I’m not crossing my fingers on it. Has anyone ever had a good experience with a contractor? I’d love to know.