You Gotta Wanta..Real Bad

The sun is shining now and the temperature will be in the high 70's today. It's hard to remember those cold chilly mornings back in early February when Jaysa, Mike, Dee and I were spending a lot of time at home waiting for little Ben to arrive. One morning Jay, Dee and I were hungry, but the weather outside was 'frightful' as the song Baby, It's Cold Outside goes.


Still, you have to eat...and when we talked about food, Dee really perked up! Well, as usual, no one wanted to cook at that time of the day. So after much looking outside and dreading getting into snow gear, we bit the bullet and decided to go make our usual run.

Jay might not look it, but she was actually happy to be getting out since she is the least likely to want to be the cook. I was really impressed with her gear. Actually, I was glad to see she didn't hold fashion over comfort when she got dolled up for our trip! Need a closer look at those boots? Here you go...

If you're wondering how cold it was that day, here's a shot of the street outside. Yes, it's a winter wonderland, but when you're over 9 months pregnant, the ice can be treacherous. Luckily, Mike is a wonderful hubby and had shoveled all the snow before he left for work. You can see by the sidewalk that we had about 4 inches of snow after he left for work.

Well, off we went with Dee gleefully observing the cold snow without having to put a paw down in it. She is usually happy for the first 2 blocks. Then, when we got into other traffic on the main road, she would get less secure.

Our first stop, at Mickey D's, was for 2 diet cokes and 2 bacon, egg and cheese biscuits. Dee perked up while we were at the speaker in the drive-thru. She knew she would be getting a good part of both biscuits!

While we were safe and warm in Jaysa's go-mobile, I got a shot of the poor geese huffing and puffing their way thru the sky.

After leaving McDonalds, Dee got scared again and hit the floorboards...literally! She hates trucks for some unknown reason, especially garbage trucks.

So, we continued our journey with one passenger cowering on the floor...

You would think a pile of junk food from Mickey D's would be enough for us, but you would be wrong. We made one other stop before we made it home, some place really nutritious and good for you.

Not everybody knows how to party like a 9 and a half month pregnant person, but her mother does... Here's our take for the morning. Wow, who knew you could get Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin Doughnut treats in one building???

Hep Me Rhonda

In Texas you have to learn a new language when you come from the "outside". One of the things I find most intriguing is how the word help becomes hep in Texas. As in "Can ah hep you?" My Texan husband lived outside of Texas for over 25 years, but he never lost his drawl or ability to mangle words. So, when he asks "Can ah hep you?" (which often happens when I'm trying to do something in what he deems his man-world...like lying on the floor trying to paint the baseboard trim), I usually go into fits of laughter.

Hep-ping usually involves deep concern on the part of the "Hepper". They often get anxious and you can often tell they want to just take over the project for the other, more hepless, person. Baily often looks anxious when wanting to hep Lily...especially when it involves hepping her eat.

Jaysa, on the other hand, is not a very good hepper, though I'm sure she would tell you I'm not the best student. Back in February, she was trying to hep me take a decent picture. There was some instruction on her part about holding down the one button until I'm ready, then taking the picture. But, I just couldn't get the hang of it and Mike and I laughed a little more than she thought was necessary... so this was the picture I got of her trying to hep me take better pictures.

Anyway, I've wandered away from the subject a little, because I started to complain that every time Gampy Bill asks me if he can "Hep" me, my crazy mind starts singing that old 60's song that goes Hep Me Rhonda, Hep Hep Me Rhonda... Now you trying getting the Texas rendition of that song out of your head today!

When Is A House Not A Home?

When is a house not a home? Anybody who has ever put their home up for sale knows the answer to that! We've shined her up and had painters in to finish all the projects I started and didn't complete.

Every time the phone rings we're ready to leave at a few minutes notice, which takes quite a bit of engineering when you live with Gampy. The other day I let my guard down and was still in my PJ's at 9:25 am. That was a mistake...the phone rang and a sweet little girl from the real estate office said, "There is a realtor who will show your house between 9:45 and 10:15".... YIKES!!! I learned my lesson that day and they won't catch me lazin' around after 8 am again.

Now there is NO laundry in the laundry room (I do it after 9 pm each night so there's none in the hamper either.)

There's no magazines on the coffee table...well, there are in this picture, but there aren't any when we leave the house each day, just in case.

There are two brand new lights over the outside entrance, and a new rug at the door. By the way, the door has been sanded down and re-stained in a beautiful new mahogany finish on the outside (I'll get a shot of that later on.)

All the walls have been painted in the rooms I started, but couldn't quite commit to finishing. And the dining room walls have been done too. It was amazing to see the painter, Charles, start and finish the room the same day. Far different than my struggle that goes on for weeks with a lot of days off in between.

The pictures on the floor are Raymond and Jessie's and we're going to take them up to them. But I did notice how great they would look in the room if they were to be hung on the wall. Somewhat of a perfect match and would add so much more dignity than my chicken and rooster prints I'm so fond of. Hey, this girl knows her faults.

I wonder if people actually believe that we live like this? hmmmm, it's only been a week. I wonder how long we can last? Anyone taking bets?

I even took all the pots off the potrack and took down the spice jar. Then I spent one whole afternoon buying and arranging the towels below. Unfortunately, later in the week I saw some monogrammed ones I liked better so I'm preparing to spend another afternoon in that pursuit. And yes, Bill has been scolded and schooled to leave the perfect towels alone and use the meager one laid on the counter. It can be thrown in the hamper on our way out the door.

It's so hard to be perfect. But I think I'm finding my inner Martha and that can be dangerous. In fact, I've got 35 things on my To Do list regarding the house alone and have started a new blog called 'Finding My Martha' for dishing on creative things around the house. But, today I'm spending this Sunday looking for Bed-Bath-and Beyond's 20%-off-one-item coupons. Who knew you could use more than one coupon per visit? Well, maybe Jaysa the coupon queen, but I've always just made several trips each day when I had lots of their coupons. Duh!

In The Kitchen With My Friend

I was trying to get some shots of my dark hair, but the lights made it look lighter...or maybe I've finally washed it out enough to lighten it up.

Here's some close ups. There were more, but there was a fiasco with the picture uploading and all my pictures disappeared for an hour or so.

Anyway, I look like I'm back to my normal color, which is a real relief. The dark color was making me look tooooooooo young, right?

Carded At Sixty...Yay!

I had to dig up some pictures from the collection from the Chicago trip in Feb as Bill just got back last night and was in no shape to do a tutorial on uploading (or is it downloading?) pictures. So the picture above is when I still had decent, if not good, hair.

Last night Bill and I ordered the "2 for 1 Senior Special" at IHOP and the waitress asked to see my ID to prove I was 55...YAY! I happily pulled out my ID showing the big 6-0.

I wonder if she would've questioned my old age if she had seen the get-up I had on one day at Jaysa and Mike's? It was one of those first days with Baby Ben when lack of sleep and better judgement caused me to realize late one afternoon that absolutely nothing I had on that day (I was still in my pajama bottoms) in any way matched. In fact, it was an abysmal failure in the 'outfit' department.

Funny thing was, I had been wearing it all day (it was about 3 in the afternoon) and neither Mike nor Jaysa had even noticed the unique flavor of my duds. The only reason I noticed was because I think there was some discussion about who was going to make a chow run and I looked down to see if I could go as I was or if I needed to change.

It's All Jaysa's Fault

Last summer I got a really short haircut I didn't like, but I loved the hair coloring the stylist did so I took a picture of it to show it in the future when changing stylists. I planned to keep the picture in my camera for future reference. This plan, as most other things in my life lately, did not work out.

About a month ago, I went with Bill while he got a haircut. "Well, I'll just get a cut myself" I thought. Never a good idea, but with the life I've been living lately, I should have know better. So I get a haircut from hell. A few days later I went to California, due to Tori's death, and didn't have time to correct it until a few weeks ago.

Well, long story short, in correcting it I ended up with a haircut much shorter than the one above. I also ended up with hair coloring a dark brownish black color because either the stylist wrote the coloring codes down wrong or they got the wrong card. Who knows... but my backup plan of showing the picture failed because Jaysa downloaded all my pictures for me while I was up there for Ben's birth (she thought 155 pictures in the camera said time to save to my computer) and automatically deleted them from my camera. So when I tried to show the stylist my picture in the camera, it was blank...which should have been a sign for me, but I ignored it and plowed ahead!

My hair was waaaaay too dark, so I tried to highlight it, but I bought the wrong kit (Frost and Tip instead of Frost and Glow...I'm not making this up, check the haircoloring isle) and the hook thingy in it kept bending after only getting the front section done. So I gave up and went with just a front section, but left it on waaaaay too long and the highlighted hair looked white-white. Not a good look. I ended up looking like Cruella DeVille from 1001 Dalmatians.

Bill swallowed hard when he saw it and couldn't even put his usual good spin on it...just stared.

Hmmm...how to fix? Buy some reddish dye and hope it lightens the whole mess? Nope, that didn't work.

Hmmmm...buy a Frost and Glow kit and highlight all over? Nope, that didn't work because I didn't highlight enough, but it is better than the Cruella look!

I am going to just leave it alone and let it grow and fade enough for another stab at it, but this time I'm going to go to the best stylist in town (name and number given me by Gail the realtor) and stick with her so she can read the card right in the future. Meanwhile, I'm blaming this all on Jaysa for deleting my picture.

Yes, I know the picture can be put back into the camera, but if I could have downloaded them in the first place I would know how to put them back...wouldn't I?????

Dee Misses Gammy

Recently Jaysa sent me an email titled "Dee misses Gammy" with the picture above attached. As much as she misses me, I miss her. Dee is just the kind of shit-disturbing type that I truly love. For instance, the first time Gampy and I visited after the kids got her, Dee wanted to sit on Gampy's lap some more, but Jaysa and Mike told her to leave him alone and shooed Dee away. Well, Dee went around to the back of the couch and, from a 4-legged flat foot position bounced over the couch and into Gampy's lap! Even Jaysa gave up trying to change Dee's mind about giving Gampy some love after that magnificent jump.

The following pictures will show you exactly why Sweet Dee misses her Gammy so much. And let me warn you before you visit them, Dee is a hard one to say "no" to!

After getting her bite, she lingered by my side, then let me know in several ways, like the one below where she moves close to me and stares longingly at my food, that she was more than ready for another bite.

It's A Wonderful Life...No Matter What Happens

Today life sent me a wake-up call in the form of a Dave Ramsey caller. Just when I blogged yesterday about all the shit that's been hitting my fan lately, a young guy calls Dave today in the 3rd hour and leaves everyone dumb-founded.

He called Dave to see if his "plan" is a good one as he wants to make sure his wife and kids are well cared for. Seems he a 27-year-old who married his wife early and joined the marines young, but has been listening to Dave for a long time and has set up a good life insurance policy and IRA, plus has quite a bit in savings. Altogether it came to over a million dollars.

He's been told by doctors that he has inoperable brain cancer. With treatment they can prolong his life, but only for a few years at most. He and his wife have chosen to not do any treatment and just to live what life they have left together as best they can.

Man, this young guy had me bawling so hard I could hardly see the road! He never lost his composure although Dave's voice cracked quite a few times. Dave agreed with everything he'd done except the young guy wanted to sell his house now and pay cash for a smaller home closer to their families in another part of Oklahoma. Dave suggested he should make sure his wife really wanted to move at this time when they had so little time left.

Of course it made me think of the most traumatic thing that's happened to me lately, that being the over-whelming grief I felt standing between Jaimee and Lily as the nurses worked on Jaimee's bleeding and another nurse and doctor tried, what seemed to be futilely, to get Lily to breathe. Every time the midwife called out the number of minutes that had elapsed since Lily was born...3 minutes...5 minutes... I felt like a million tons of rocks were weighing me farther and farther down. When I couldn't stand anymore, I went to the corner and prayed. There's a lot more to the story, but just let me say that the tiny cry from deep down in a well was the most wonderful sound in the world.

Bless this young man and his family. I will forever be grateful to him for reminding me of what is important in life. For one, Lily has a chance to grow up and watch her big brother get ready for the prom, just like her mama and aunt Jaysa did so many years ago as Tori got ready to go to hers.

Shit Happens...Again And Again

I need to capture what's been happening so I never forget this "lost" winter. Seems just yesterday it was September...then stuff happened.

• Bill spent October, and one week in November, working in DC for headquarters



• when he got home we drove over to Albuquerque for Thanksgiving and drove home



• as soon as we got back, I flew to Chicago for Jaysa and Mike's baby shower



• in January Bill had to take 2 "week-long" trips, which shot that month



• Feb 6th I flew to Chicago for Ben's birth (waited..and waited...finally 17th he arrived). I got to spend some wonderful days snuggling his neck and cuddling with little Dee, then back to the real world.



• Feb 28th I flew home and the next day we threw a surprise 63rd anniversary party at the lake for Bill's parents, Jessie and Raymond (Mom and Pop)



• the next night Jessie had a mini stroke and spent 3 or 4 days in the hospital, then went into rehab for a week



• meanwhile, Lily was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Albuquerque and spent 3 days there then a week on oxygen (Bill and I drove over and back in a 5 day period to help with Lily and ended up cleaning Jaimee's old apartment she'd just moved out of)



• Mom and Pop decided to move to a retirement community to make their life a little easier since Pop had to give up driving (a 3rd accident on March 1st convinced us it was time)



• Tori died on St Patrick's Day. I flew to California and spent a week with Mom



• the day I got back, we started helping Mom and Pop move and packed up their house and put it on the market (this entails many days of U-haul trucks and trailers and 4-hour drives each way)



• we got back 1 a.m. on Saturday morning and de-cluttered our house over the rest of the weekend and will put it on the market this week (I'll be painting and fixing it up for the next few weeks while Bill goes to DC again and then spends a week aduiting offices in East Texas )

What I'm trying to say is, I really miss my nice quiet life. When I think of how yesterday was September and today is April...something...I wonder where my life went?

Another St Pat's Angel

Every time I've come to my blog to post since St Patrick's day, I see Tori's picture and quit. It's time to get past the painful side of that day and get back to posting.

On that note, here is Ben playing a St Paddy's troll. If you ever had a troll doll, you will remember how their hair stuck straight up and their eyes stared at you...recognize the similarities? He's the cutest little troll in the world and it's not only his mother who thinks he's charming!

Saint Paddy's Angel

My little sister Tori was born a month before I turned 18, making me old enough to be her mother. She was born with beauty, grace, and a mischievous smile that made your heart go soft when you tried to be angry with her. She often made me feel young and old at the same time, and seldom could I keep from cracking up if she went to work on me trying to make me giggle. No matter how old we were, I could never stay mad when she was around.

Just a few hours ago, we got 'the call'. You know, the one you never think you'll get. The one you pray will never come. The one that only comes out of the blue and hits you like a ton of rocks. Those type calls never make any sense...this one least of all. Tori is gone. All I can think is... how can that be? I always thought there would be time to get together and rid ourselves of past grudes. Now all there is is the past, and it is not what I would like it to be.

Back in the 90's, when she and my sister Becky were well past 21, the two of them would show up at my apartment with bottles of beer. I wasn't much of a drinker then or now, but the two of them didn't mind if I drank coke while they had a beer. So we would be at the table laughing, with a bunch of empties on the table, and our mother and step-father would drive up. "Quick" Tori would say to Becky, and she and Becky would slide all the beer bottles in front of me! Louie and Mom would walk in the door, and there I'd sit with a bunch of empty Sam Adams piled up in front of me, while Tori and Becky appeared to be sharing a Coca-Cola. Mom never bought it for a minute, but somehow Tori thought Mom believed that I was quite the drinker, and Tori loved to tease and joke me about it over the years.

It was often said of Tori... "She's no saint!" Heck, I said it many times myself.

But she looked like an angel most of the time, and I think of it as some sort of impishness on her part that caused her to leave on St Patrick's Day. And I will forever picture her with that little mischievous smile.

May God keep you safe now little sister. Your mother and the rest of us will do everything in this world to ensure your little girl knows how wonderful you are.

The Good, The Bad, And...The Ugly

While visiting Jaysa and Mike, I got a chance to see all sides of Mike. At times, he was as helpful as can be and ensured that pregnant Jaysa never had to lift a finger to get her laundry baskets up and down the stairs. Obviously, this is The Good Mike.

Then there was The Bad Mike, the one who tried to get Jaysa riled up whenever he could (which is easy to do when you know how to push her buttons...or... when she's driving).

Back in December, when I was there for the baby shower, Jaysa was driving and didn't realize her lights were off due to the bright whiteness of the snow. A police car with lights flashing pulled us over, took Jaysa's registration and license, then let her off with a warning ticket. After that, whenever Jaysa criticized Mike's driving, Mike would laugh at her and call out "raise your hand if you haven't been pulled over by a policeman this week!" To which, everyone in the car except Jaysa would raise their hand and touch the roof.

To me, Bad Mike is almost as funny as Billy Bob Thornton's character in Bad Santa.







Then there's The Ugly Mike. There are no words needed to point out that Mike would make a very ugly chick. Mike gave us a flash of girly style when he was rounding up wrapping paper and bows from a session of gift opening.






Need a close up of this lovely look? Yeah, I heard that gasp from you!

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Take A Roadtrip

Last Friday we got a call from Jaimee about Lily being hospitalized for breathing problems due to a respiratory virus. Luckily "Gampy" Bill was supposed to be on travel this week, but it was cancelled last Thursday, so he went in to work on Saturday afternoon and was able to clear his schedule and take this week off. We jumped in the truck Sunday morning and drove all day, getting to Albuquerque on Sunday night just after Lily was discharged from the hospital and allowed to go home on oxygen.

It was stormy weather on the way over, but towards the end of the trip a big rainbow lite up the sky toward the north. I got a feeling that all was going to be well with my world...Gampy was snoring from the back seat, a CD download of a broadcast from Coast To Coast AM was playing on the stereo, and I knew exactly where to find a little pot of gold!

Here's Lily today, feeling much better and wondering how she can slip out of this oxygen tank contraption?