Wading barefoot through the stream of consciousness

I don't have much I want to talk about right now so here are some random bits of fluff:

• It's cold.
• Luckily Mr. Dub is out of town so I was able to double up with the covers last night.
• I had to, because, you know, I took the extra blanket off the bed the other day.
• I hate when I wake up at night because I'm cold.
• Mr. Dub is in Arlington at opening day.
• Opening day is the first day of Major League Baseball.
• His team won.
• It's weird when his team wins because he doesn't get all happy and excited.
• It's more like he's just relieved that things are finally going the way they were supposed to all along.
• I wonder what will happen today.
• I'm reading a book called A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute.
• I think that's what it is called.
• I don't want to go downstairs to make sure.
• I hope it will be a good book.
• I only started it yesterday.
• I hate hate hate when I start a book because somebody recommended it to me and then I have to struggle to get through it.
• Book Club is next week.
• I think it is anyway.
• I should find out.
• The car horn on my van started blowing full blast for no reason on Sunday morning about 9:30.
• The sound was so loud and so intense that I couldn't SEE.
• That is so bizarre because what in the world does sound have to do with vision?
• I guess my whole sensory system was overloaded.
• I couldn't make it stop and would any one of the males I live with come out to help me figure out how to make it stop?
• No.
• But finally my next-door neighbor appeared and he had a wrench and he unhooked the battery cable.
• And finally, blessed silence prevailed again in the 'hood.
• I was a little embarassed because I was still in my jammies with some major bed-head going on.
• By that time my men had emerged from the house.
• And since I still couldn't see and my heart was still hammering they took the horn fuse out of the fuse box when I asked them to.
• And reattached the battery cable.
• So now the van will start and the horn will not honk.
• But luckily I JUST had the van inspected last month.
• So I've got nearly a year before I have to worry about it.
• And by that time we will have disposed of the van.
• But all my radio presets are gone.
• And the clock is wrong.

My toes are getting pruney - I'm ready to step out of the water. Hope y'all have a bee-yooo-tiful day!

Am I controlling the weather?

We are a week into April, and along the Gulf Coast that means it is nearly summer. We're talking 80 degrees by 10 am. By the end of April I expect that we will be into the 90's in the afternoons and mid-to-upper 70's during the "cool" part of the day/night.

Es tropical, gente.

And yet, every time so far in 2009 that I've taken the extra blanket off my bed, thinking that surely "winter" is over, here comes another cold front. It's supposed to get into the 30's tonight. And you guessed it - the blanket came off the bed yesterday. It's been on and off the bed three times already this spring.

On Wednesday the cold front will be moving on. So we get that bizarre combination of 40 degrees when the kids leave for school in the morning, and 75 or 80 degrees when they get home. You know what that means, don't you? All the coats and jackets that my children own will be left at school this week.

Furnace going at night, air conditioner running all day. That means the gas bill AND the electric bill will be high this month. Wonderful!

I'm going to remember my blanket-off-the-bed trick in August when we are sorely in need of a cold front!

I've still got it

Lately, since I turned 44 last month, I've been feeling sort of old. Sort of crone. Old, wrinkled, gray, boring, and kind of used up and worn out. I have some gray hair, some wrinkles around my eyes, and my skin doesn't seem as fresh and firm as it used to be. A couple of my moles (which I've always hated) have inexplicably started sprouting hairs (which makes them even more hateful). My eyebrows don't peacefully coexist with me anymore - they've revolted.

Bummer.

But God is good and has graciously sent me a simple reminder that I'm still young. In addition to the grays, the wrinkles, the sagging skin, the errant eyebrows, I've also got....a pimple. A nice, big, juicy, red, doozy of a zit. Front and center, just above my lip on my right cheek.

It's a wonderful thing to know that my body is still so youthful.

It looks like a trip to the salon is in order. I need hair dye, hot wax, and a facial, and I need it quick.

Words to live by

"What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might."
~Cicero

Breaking Up with Bon Jovi

I was personally crushed to read an article a few weeks ago where Mr. John Francois Bongiovi, Jr. was quoted as saying that fooling around on his wife Dorothea was just part of his job as a musician.

What?

I've been letting that information percolate inside my head for a while now and I've decided that Bon Jovi is off my list of secret boyfriends. I have to tell you that it causes me no end of psychic pain. I mean, really, just look at this:


See that furrowed brow? He looks like he's in pain, doesn't he? The kind of pain that can only be healed by the love and admiration of a good woman?

Nope. It's the pain of a guilty conscience. I have no use for you, Bon Jovi. It hurts me to say it, but it's true. You're a low-down dirty dog.

I have to let you go. Maybe you'll come to your senses. Maybe you'll get yourself together. Maybe Dot will kick your sorry behind to the curb. Maybe in time I'll be able to remember you as you were:

Hopelessly self-centered

Here's the thing about volunteering at the kids' schools:

I don't really like it.

Here's the other thing:

When you say to them, "I can spend four hours doing your work" they say back to you, "Oh...well... can't you make it seven hours? It's for the children."

I'm headed off to volunteer at the school and "chaperone" the non-varsity girls choir at UIL today. All day.

Wouldn't it be great if I could:

• be a little less self-absorbed?
• love doing other people's jobs for them?
• not want to just do my own thing all the time?

March Mittens

My month of gratitude is over - I'm grateful for that!

The month of March was a little weird. We had Spring Break which is always just super fun, and some crazy bad allergy attacks. I didn't do a whole lot of knitting. I did blow my nose a lot so that should count for something, right?

The number of pairs of mittens hand-knitted by moi in March is 7, with a grand total of 27 pairs. That's 54 mittens if you're counting them individually. Or 53, 857, 892 stitches. (Which, coincidentally, equals the number of times I sneezed 0r rubbed my itchy eyes in March.)*

I got some projects and work done in March. I'm still feeling the urge to do some nesting and spring cleaning - and for me that means purging excess and unneeded items from the house, redecorating, washing down and scrubbing out, organizing and labelling, and generally clearing out and sprucing up. This is always scary to the pack-rat males I live with because it means that nothing is safe and everything has been or will be moved or changed. Watch out men, you've been warned.**

I love it.

*My numbers may be a little off. I actually have no idea how many stitches are in 54 mittens. Or how many times I've sneezed in the last 31 days. I'm not very interested in counting them. I'm keeping myself all hopped up on a lot of antihistamines so I tend to either forget what I'm doing or lose my place or fall asleep right in the middle of something. But I know I knit 7 pairs of mittens in March. I like the number 7. It's nice and low and even somebody like me who doesn't love math and is chronically sleep-deprived and is taking a lot of cold medicine can get to 7 without too much trouble.
**Can you picture Mr. Dub sitting calmly in his office reading these words and suddenly breaking out into a cold sweat, feeling panicky and slightly nauseous, and then rushing home to save the precious tidbits he's left laying around the entire house? I can...