Friday, April 22, 2011

it's spring


i gave my place a make-over.  i like it but i want YOU to let me know if my new site:


  • if it hurts your eyes
  • blinds you
  • hurts your feelings
  • give you weird flashbacks
  • makes you have seizures
  • makes you want to kill, kill, kill
  • makes untoward advances

please notify me immediately!

tons of eggs



i got myself in a bit of a pickle. i offered to make deviled eggs for the dinner Sunday. no problem. but i am trying to outdo myself, so i am making eggs with 3 or 4 toppings. the yolk part is all the same, but i am thinking of doing different sprinkles:

  • paprika- for wussies- 5 dozen halves
  • ranch powder- 12 halves
  • corky's bbq spice- 12 halves, if i don't do this, i just add 6 to the ranch and dill
  • dill- 12 halves, i know, it is very very martha
i will let you know which went over well. yes, i will count the eggs. that way i will know and have actual numbers to back up my responses. plus izzy has to do a match project and we have to take notes that she will then place on index cards and cover them in pink glitter.

but i have to boil 4 dozens eggs. i am starting tonight, so tomorrow everything will be chilled and i can make the yolk goo. i have the biggest rubbermaid tote that really shallow and it shall hold eggs. i am also taking a nice glass dish if my grandmother's.

so i will be boiling eggs.

for a long time.

Monday, April 18, 2011

hey again



i know i haven't blogged lately. i have a good reason.

my best friend died.

we had been friends since we were 12. god, that's 34 years! we were like sisters. in fact, before my sister got her mental illness/bipolar disorder under control, i called her the sister god forgot to give me.

she died sometime over the week-end, between april 8-10. her homemaker visited with her friday, then found her dead in her bed monday morning. she went peacefully and hopefully didn't suffer.

the only good thing to come out of this is that the person i have known longest on this planet and i have reconnected. we went to nursery school together. he is gay and has been with his husband almost as long as i have been with mine.  i have no problem with him being gay, we have always had a ton of fun together. my friend who died met him through me. they played at dating for a while he worked through some issues.

we did discover that she did some things that now seem a bit distasteful to keep us apart. that's how i lost contact with him. i think she was afraid that somehow he would become ungay and i would end up with him. i don't know. but she did go to great lengths to keep us apart, causing us both to have bad feeling toward each other and drift away. but we worked it out and we are cool again.

we have spent a lot of time on the phone together. we had 20 years of crap to catch up on. i told hm about how i terrorized my last boss. he knows i am not prejudice or anything, so when i say thing things like fairy or froot loop, he just laughs. because that's how he talks too. if you ever wanted a girl friend, he's your guy. i have decided to nickname him rider for my own purposes here.

i have missed my friend. several times i have picked up the phone and started to call her. but she won't answer. because she is dead.

i gave myself last week off of all responsibilities. i cried a lot. but i am better today. i can think of her without bursting into tears. i made a website for people to visit, write their memories and write letters and such. it has some of her favorite music on it. i've spoken with her mom whom i shall call queen and while we haven't actually addressed it, we both know she died of a drug overdose.

her mom has danced around it, but if it had been a heart attack or respiratory failure, her mother would have shouted it from the rooftops. it's just like the pink elephant in the room. we've made tentative plans to get together to scatter my friend's ashes, as well as those of her husband who committed suicide 7 years ago. they will always be together and i know that's the way she wanted it.

it's back to responsibilities this week. i have made a list of things that need to be done: letters to write, laundry to do, housekeeping that must be done before the crew of hoarders shows up at my door. i've spoken before about problems i had with a house i lost to foreclosure and i have a feeling it will be resolved in my favor soon. i'm trying to sort out the garage stuff as well, since our big garage sale is only 2 weeks away.if- and i know it will be- resolved in my favor, i will have things half-ready to move. i even have a house picked out. that's half the battle, right? i've picked out a real estate agent from church. she's someone who got her real estate license right when the market went bust and i feel better knowing that the commissions will go to someone who needs the money, rather than someone just adding more money to the stash in their mattress. she won't have to do much, just get us a showing and do the paperwork. i have a few in reserve, so if it's sold, we go on to number 2. big deal. when we get to number 5 on the list, i lose the pool. big whoop, we just join the ymca, right?

i've made sure that each house is in the right area, has at least 3 bedrooms/2 bathrooms, has a covered outdoor area so i'm not stuck in the house and is on one level. i didn't like a few of the countertops but those can be changed. nothing i can't live with. plus i will have a big surplus of cash each month since i won't have a housenote so i can renovate it as needed.

i'll be here, it just may be spotty until we get this crap worked out. but i'm here and i am okay.

i had the grandbabies yesterday. i put them to work. after church, we took bobo home, then after going to target, we went to lunch and then lowe's where we each picked out a 6 pk. of annuals. i need more, but i didn't want to get more than we could finish in the one day. they put on their playclothes, i got on my gardening togs- a pair of shorts and a ratty t-shirt. they weeded the entire bed of every weed, i transplanted a huge hosta to the middle and i showed them how to lay out the flowers before digging. we got everything in the ground and they were so please of what they did. when their mother picked them up, she was impressed with their efforts. i know what she will make them do next week! i had some iris bulbs in the back corners of the bed anyway which are starting to show some growth and i plan to get some more flowers to fill in. we bought yellow, orange and red yesterday, so i am thinking pink and white to fill in the bare spots. maybe some dusty millers.

then i get to go to work on the trellises. i am going with some scarlet and orange flowering vines, plus moonflowers for nighttime interest.

we've had some space issues with the neighbors. they threw a huge party and i had to listen to rap saturday night as they stood outside and drank their 40 ounce beers. they finished up by midnight or i was going to call the police. then sunday they decided to use my driveway as part of their estate. i do not like being part of a drive-through. if i happens again, i will say something to her. if it keeps on happening, i will have the police over to explain boundaries and noise restrictions to her. if she won't listen to me, maybe a badge will help.

i hope it doesn't come to that. but if it does, she asked for it. they may discover some of her "home-based business" is not quite legal. i know i didn't sign up to sell crack for her, so you can see my concern over her friends using my driveway. i want nothing to do with any of that, even though i don't plan on being here  very much longer. i don't want any mess, especially when i will have some BIG money soon. i don't need that kind of money seized by the state for her monkey business.

Friday, April 8, 2011

what works for me!



i avoid carbs, sugar and second helpings. i watch tv only while i bounce on my balance ball like a hippity hop.

i lost 64 lbs. since january of this year! now i only weigh 199 lbs.

the dark side?

i tried weight watchers, atkins, the grapefruit diet, the 3 day diet, the hotdog/egg/banana diet that gives you atomic farts, slim fast, phen-fen, dexatrim, and every other diet known to man.

i went from 135 to 328 lbs. from 1991-2010. i lost a bit at the end, so i weighed 263 lbs. by january 2011.

i'm going to sit on that ball until i reach 150 lbs!
yeah, this will be me!

Monday, April 4, 2011

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

it's my birthday!


yes, i am 46 years old today! i have gotten some great gifts:

  • $50 target card- i have decided to buy a gas grill and will add this to the $50 in rx gift cards i have already.
  • $50 gift card to my favorite gift shop- they sell vera bradley and tervis tumblers! my son and his wife cooked us a great dinner sunday night- which is halfway between our birthdays.
  • a new vera bradley purse and key ring in the baroque pattern- hubby asked me what pattern i wanted and i gave him the $20 gift card i got from vera bradley for my birthday. kudos to the saleperson who helped him pick it out!
  • i have a box of gifts coming from my oldest friend who lives in missouri.
  • a flip ultra video camcorder- just wait, i'm going to bore the crap out of you with my stupid videos of my dog!

now, drumroll-

  • $646! i won 2nd prize in a weigh loss contest i found on the internet! the buy in was $20. i will be buying a set of tires for my car and probably buy something weird with the rest. i lost over 60 lbs. in the last 12 weeks.
  • in direct contradiction to the above entry, my husband is taking me out for sushi tomorrow. we would have gone today, but i have my weight loss class tonight and i want to weigh in skinny! tomorrow, i will stuff my face with sushi!
i really have great friends and family, right? yes, people love me.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

energized by the sunshine and the supermoon



did anyone catch the supermoon last night? i went out to watch it and it seemed much clearer than it normally does. the people 2 doors down had their solstice party, they had the last one at christmas. i can only guess that they are pagan or wiccan, as they never have company unless it is within a few days of a solstice. i have detected a pattern. i guess i did a gladys kravitz on them. i wish they would invite me. but this neighborhood is not designed to make friends easily. we are isolated by a ditch between every yard and we live on a very steep hill.

it was so nice yesterday, i did some gardening work, which at this point is just cleaning things up and deciding what will go where. i have planted my iris bulbs and plan on planting some bulbs that are like white buttercups. i want to get a forsythia bush for the front floorbed, as well as couple of hostas.

i have planted iris bulbs in pots on either side of the back door. to one pot, i added hollyhock seeds. to the other, i added delphiniums. i want to be able to fill my house with fresh cut flowers!

i am not sure what to do about the trellis situation. i have 3 trellises which i plant in front of the porch and use it to enclose the front porch. i am not sure if i want morning glorys, moon flowers and four o'clocks (so that it is in effect a living clock) or trying crimson vine this year. i planted too may last year- 6 flowers per trellis- and it bent the trellises. so we wired a metal chair to it to keep it upright. when that fell, we started adding bricks to the chairs to hold it down. i think 2 flowers max per trellis will be enough. i did find some pink morning glory seeds, so that might be interesting.

i won't even get started on the roses!

i would like to find tea bushes, so i can make my own tea. i think that would be fun. i also want a pomegranate bush. but i am doing this the frugal way ad getting things on sale, or smaller specimens or accepting any gifts of cuttings and rootings the universe might send my way.