I took the little girls shopping today after spending the night last night--they came home with us as they are on spring break this week*. We started with Abercrombie for Morgan. She was looking at some jeans and exclaimed, "there is no way I'm getting a size 16!" Yeah, I said that a few sizes ago too. She finally had to concede the fact that she does indeed wear a 16 now--slim, so that should be some consolation! Actually, I think she's ready to move to a size 0. Never have seen that size myself.
*We went to Steph's for Easter---the whole family. Mindy came by way of New York and arrived 5 hours late. Butch was still sick with the flu---came home from New York with it on Tuesday a.m. He pretty much missed the whole weekend. Great fun---so many games, great food---Morgan made both casseroles for Saturday night dinner. Wisconsin is COLD---still snow covered. We witnessed a few inches ourselves. We broke Stephanie's house in "real good"---luckily they are moving, so she didn't mind. That many people is hard on a house!
While we were gone, our burglar alarm went off. This was actually the first time we set it in about 5 or 6 years. Unfortunately for my friend, Connie, she's still on our emergency call list. Being the good friends that they are, she and Jack came over to check out our house. I'm not sure what they would have done if there was actually a burglar here, but that's a good friend for you---sacrifice safety for our house! And they sure did...
Jack had the bad luck to startle the police officer sneaking around the back. He pulled his gun on him--told him to sit down (on the wall with his back to the pool) and shut up. About that time, Connie came around and was told to sit down and shut up too. If you know her, that is pretty tall order---she ended up being told to shut up about 6 times. They were held for about 45 minutes and as the sun set, it got cold. Connie called me in Wisconsin and informed me that I had stretched the limits of our friendship. I was already on thin ice after the last time I was out-of-town and I asked her to pick up the mail---she had to contend with about 20 very large and heavy boxes that had to be moved from the front porch around to the garage. It was before Christmas and the gifts were coming in. Honestly, I had no idea they would all come at once! She's not buying it! I've begged her to give me one more chance. Besides, even though we were out-of-town, we still managed to entertain them!
Sorry, I haven't posted in so long. There's been plenty going on, but I've forgotten most of it.
No way should Jason be in the bottom 3 tonight! I LOVE him!
Later....
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sadly...
...the experiment didn't work. I see the doctor today to bring him up-to-date. On a positive note, it looks like I can go about 3 weeks without P. Then it's about a week on. Not so bad.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Big Snow
Here it is! Our big snow. I blog on my laptop downstairs, but photos are stored on my desktop upstairs. That's why sometimes you have to wait for the photo.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Bad Driving Decisions
Most of you St. Louis folks already know my mistake by choosing I-64/40 on my way into town. I was amazed at how little traffic there was and figured Saturday must be the day to drive to St. Louis. Then, I realized the highway was closed and had to take a very long detour. Jeanne said that I should have MapQuested it and I would have known. Hello---I've only driven to St. Louis a zillion times, so why would I MapQuest it??
Coming home, I made another bad decision. I left mom's at 3:45 a.m. Very light traffic at that time in the morning. I decided that when I reached 70/270, I'd go east through Illinois rather than go all the way downtown and cross there. Bad idea. By the time I reached Hazelwood, the snow started. By the time I got to Florissant, it was really coming down. Passing through Spanish Lake, I noticed all the police lights right before Lilac. I was forced to exit there. I stopped and talked to the cop and had the choice of turning around and catching 170 to connect back to 70, or make a right on Lilac and go to Riverview and then backtracking to 270. I chose the right (you know how I love my "rule of the right")! Luckily for me that there isn't much traffic at 4 a.m. as I skidded through several intersections. By the time I reached Riverview, I decided NOT to take the "Road Less Traveled". Instead, I took a right and went down to Broadway. I headed downtown and picked up 70 again. Had I continued down 70 to begin with, I probably would have missed the snow altogether. By this time, I was thinking, I just want to get out of this god-forsaken city! It was slow going. I'm not stupid---I wanted to get home safely. I had to stick pretty close to 45 m.p.h. almost all the way to Mount Vernon. After that, it was smooth sailing. No, snow.
Paducah is our halfway point. I reached there about 7:30 a.m. and called Butch to see what the weather was like in Nashville. All clear ahead. I was just past Clarksville (about 50 minutes outside of Nashville) when the traffic came to a dead stop. After waiting about 15 minutes, I knew it wasn't a good sign when pickups were turning around and going backwards up the shoulder. I followed them---thank goodness for 4 wheel drive in the mud! I ended up coming into town by way of the Old Clarksville highway. I ended up getting home about 10:30---only 1 hour and 45 minutes later than I should have been. But at least I was safe!! Later, I heard on the news that a truck had collapsed in the middle---no accident, or weather related issue---just broke in half. It was carrying auto parts. It took 20 men 4 hours to unload the truck so they could move it. It had too much weight for the truck. That traffic ended up being backed up all the way past Clarksville for 10 hours!!! I would have DIED if I was stuck that long. I wonder how many people ran out of gas. After all, it was 34 degrees here.
Oh, and when I got home, it started to snow hard. I took a picture and will post it later. By noon, the snow was gone. It did snow off and on all day, but didn't amount to much. When you have 60+ degrees most of the time, the ground just melts it. Still, I'm glad I didn't miss our BIG snow!
Coming home, I made another bad decision. I left mom's at 3:45 a.m. Very light traffic at that time in the morning. I decided that when I reached 70/270, I'd go east through Illinois rather than go all the way downtown and cross there. Bad idea. By the time I reached Hazelwood, the snow started. By the time I got to Florissant, it was really coming down. Passing through Spanish Lake, I noticed all the police lights right before Lilac. I was forced to exit there. I stopped and talked to the cop and had the choice of turning around and catching 170 to connect back to 70, or make a right on Lilac and go to Riverview and then backtracking to 270. I chose the right (you know how I love my "rule of the right")! Luckily for me that there isn't much traffic at 4 a.m. as I skidded through several intersections. By the time I reached Riverview, I decided NOT to take the "Road Less Traveled". Instead, I took a right and went down to Broadway. I headed downtown and picked up 70 again. Had I continued down 70 to begin with, I probably would have missed the snow altogether. By this time, I was thinking, I just want to get out of this god-forsaken city! It was slow going. I'm not stupid---I wanted to get home safely. I had to stick pretty close to 45 m.p.h. almost all the way to Mount Vernon. After that, it was smooth sailing. No, snow.
Paducah is our halfway point. I reached there about 7:30 a.m. and called Butch to see what the weather was like in Nashville. All clear ahead. I was just past Clarksville (about 50 minutes outside of Nashville) when the traffic came to a dead stop. After waiting about 15 minutes, I knew it wasn't a good sign when pickups were turning around and going backwards up the shoulder. I followed them---thank goodness for 4 wheel drive in the mud! I ended up coming into town by way of the Old Clarksville highway. I ended up getting home about 10:30---only 1 hour and 45 minutes later than I should have been. But at least I was safe!! Later, I heard on the news that a truck had collapsed in the middle---no accident, or weather related issue---just broke in half. It was carrying auto parts. It took 20 men 4 hours to unload the truck so they could move it. It had too much weight for the truck. That traffic ended up being backed up all the way past Clarksville for 10 hours!!! I would have DIED if I was stuck that long. I wonder how many people ran out of gas. After all, it was 34 degrees here.
Oh, and when I got home, it started to snow hard. I took a picture and will post it later. By noon, the snow was gone. It did snow off and on all day, but didn't amount to much. When you have 60+ degrees most of the time, the ground just melts it. Still, I'm glad I didn't miss our BIG snow!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The Hunt Comes to an End
Over the past month, we've looked at several houses. We actually found the perfect place, but the yard was crappy---or I should say, how the house sat on the lot was crappy. Anyway, after that I had a couple of different ideas. I got up one morning and told Butch that what we needed to do was to build THIS house, but tweak it a bit to make it exactly what we want. Then he reminded me of how we'd vowed we'd never build a house because we've seen it happen too often--by the time you're done, you've spent 40% more than you wanted. Don't want to deal with the unknown.
My next idea was to add on to this house---an additional 2 car garage with a studio for me above. Sounds good, but if we do that, then we'll price ourselves out of the neighborhood. Plus, we don't really like our neighborhood anymore anyway.
That left us with continuing the search, or just staying here and forgetting about it. We decided to stay here. Then, of course, after making that decision, our realtor sent me an email about a house in my favorite neighborhood (Northumberland) where there aren't many things available---ever. Figures, just when we make the decision to stop looking, we find something. It sounded absolutely perfect--maybe a tad bigger than we wanted, but everything we were looking for.
The house actually came on the market today and I met my realtor there. The neighborhood is incredible, the house was gorgeous. There were a couple things I didn't like: kind of gaudy---very expensive hand-made furniture, moldings, hand-painting, murals, and gold, "scrolly" fixtures. I'm thinking, well, it might be a shame to "rip out" expensive stuff, but it will have to be done. The other drawback---too many outside doors.
It reminded me of a comment my friend, Nancy made after we moved into this house. We were at the theater one night when she said that she had lain in bed and counted all the ways to get in my house. She wanted to know if that scared me. I said, "well, I hadn't really thought about it, but thank you very much---Butch is out-of-town and I have to go home to a dark, empty house." As it is, I'll discover an unlocked door somewhere and we'll realize that it's been unlocked for weeks! Definitely a problem.
The house I looked at today had probably twice as many doors as this one. They all lead to the gorgeous terrace, formal gardens and pool---beautiful. I reminded myself that it is a gated community, but that many doors still seemed like a drawback.
But--- the KISS of DEATH appeared as we went out onto the terrace overlooking the garden and pool. My buddies from the American Leak Detection were there! That was it, game over, finished, done, no way am I trading my current known pool problems for new unknown pool problems!!!
There's a certain comfort in knowing what your own house problems are. I guess we're back to staying right here!!
My next idea was to add on to this house---an additional 2 car garage with a studio for me above. Sounds good, but if we do that, then we'll price ourselves out of the neighborhood. Plus, we don't really like our neighborhood anymore anyway.
That left us with continuing the search, or just staying here and forgetting about it. We decided to stay here. Then, of course, after making that decision, our realtor sent me an email about a house in my favorite neighborhood (Northumberland) where there aren't many things available---ever. Figures, just when we make the decision to stop looking, we find something. It sounded absolutely perfect--maybe a tad bigger than we wanted, but everything we were looking for.
The house actually came on the market today and I met my realtor there. The neighborhood is incredible, the house was gorgeous. There were a couple things I didn't like: kind of gaudy---very expensive hand-made furniture, moldings, hand-painting, murals, and gold, "scrolly" fixtures. I'm thinking, well, it might be a shame to "rip out" expensive stuff, but it will have to be done. The other drawback---too many outside doors.
It reminded me of a comment my friend, Nancy made after we moved into this house. We were at the theater one night when she said that she had lain in bed and counted all the ways to get in my house. She wanted to know if that scared me. I said, "well, I hadn't really thought about it, but thank you very much---Butch is out-of-town and I have to go home to a dark, empty house." As it is, I'll discover an unlocked door somewhere and we'll realize that it's been unlocked for weeks! Definitely a problem.
The house I looked at today had probably twice as many doors as this one. They all lead to the gorgeous terrace, formal gardens and pool---beautiful. I reminded myself that it is a gated community, but that many doors still seemed like a drawback.
But--- the KISS of DEATH appeared as we went out onto the terrace overlooking the garden and pool. My buddies from the American Leak Detection were there! That was it, game over, finished, done, no way am I trading my current known pool problems for new unknown pool problems!!!
There's a certain comfort in knowing what your own house problems are. I guess we're back to staying right here!!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Reality TV
I think it's funny that just the mere watching of reality TV somehow makes us experts. Butch and I sit here and watch American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance---you name it---and suddenly we know it ALL! We become Simon Cowell, Piers or any of those other British, negative judges. If you heard us, you would think that we, ourselves could sing, dance or have some other sort of talent. I guess our best talent is "judging" the talent of others. As if what we think matters a whit. Oh well, it entertains us! And we never even actually vote.
That reminds me of my big opportunity to be a rock star as a teen. Some of the guys in the neighborhood decided they needed a girl singer in their band and asked me. But, my mom said, "no". I guess she heard me sing around the house too much and knew I didn't have a career there. Mom---crusher of dreams!
That reminds me of my big opportunity to be a rock star as a teen. Some of the guys in the neighborhood decided they needed a girl singer in their band and asked me. But, my mom said, "no". I guess she heard me sing around the house too much and knew I didn't have a career there. Mom---crusher of dreams!
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