Freeloader...

have ya'll ever bought worms? not for fishing and not to help turn garbage into compost, but to feed Mama Birds and their babies...well, actually just to help Mama feed those bottomless pits called baby birds...

Wild Birds Unlimited sells mealy worms...for $16...for a pretty dinky-sized bag...okay, full disclosure*...the bag is dinky, but there are lots of those nasty little worms in that dinky bag...

But apparently, our mealy worms don't cut it with Mama Cardinal...however, somebody else has discovered the gravy trainI didn't have the heart to be angry with him...

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*complete complete disclosure...mealy worms need to be kept in the fridge...

Oh, The Havoc That Something Called...

a Full-Time Job can wreak upon one's good intentions!

yep, I got a lovely 20-hour part-time job at the tail end of October that was just
perfect for my life...

and then come December, it transformed into a full-time position...mannnnnn....

I remember when I was in my 20s that I could:

keep a spotless house
keep a gorgeous garden
have a family (husband & son)
volunteer with animal rescue
keep a house full of our own 4-legged children
work full-time
attend college

and still have a social life...

Pardon me, but what happened?

now if I get 1 little extra thing done in the course of 7 days, I'm pleased as punch...

this week's major accomplishment was...

oh hell...that was last week...

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*Complete disclosure: I haven't really visited my blog friends because I felt like such a slacker but I'm going to try to do better...really...

Colour Me...

a little Grumpy, leanin' towards Belligerent...

my side hurts, my toes are cold and I'm hungry...and I'm too lazy to do anything about the cold toes and dinner...

some times it just feels good to wallow in the mud, doesn't it?

and I know blog entries are more fun with photos but I am not going to take a photo of my toes...especially since a man I was madly in love with a long long long time ago looked down at my feet once night, as we walked along after seeing a friend off on a train, and completely out of the blue said, and I quote: "You have strange toes"*...

that's right...he went there...

we didn't see one another much after that...he did beg, but that is the way the Big Ball of Rejection bounces on your head after talkin' trash about my toes...peanut head...

anyhoo...Miss Becky over at In Every Season tapped me for a little book love...

here is how it goes:

Pass this on to 5 blogging friends.

Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, to page 56.

Write out the 5th sentence, as well as two to five sentences following that...

well, I reached into the basket under my bedside table and I was hoping against hope to grab Winnie-the-Pooh but I grabbed Jan Karon's Out to Canaan instead...

so here goes: okay...that was boring...so I'll get Winnie-the-Pooh which is right by where Out to Canaan was and I could have just as easily grabbed it...

"Having made certain of this, he took the jar back to Piglet, and Piglet looked up from the bottom of His Very Deep Pit and said "Got it?" and Pooh said, "Yes, but it isn't quite a full jar," and he threw it down to Piglet, and Piglet said, "No, it isn't! Is that all you've got left?" and Pooh said, "Yes." Because it was. So Piglet put the jar at the bottom of the Pit, and climbed out, and they went off home together.

"Well, good night, Pooh," said Piglet, when they had got to Pooh's house. "And we meet at six o'clock tomorrow morning by the Pine Trees, and see how many Heffalumps we've got in our Trap"...

...all I have to say is I thought I wrote rambling sentences...and I'll leave the speculation about what Mr. Milne may or may not have been smokin' up to somebody else**...

I'm going to tap anybody else who'd like to play along who'd like...'cause I already broke one of 2 rules anyway...

Take It Easy, ya'll...

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*and he most definitely did not mean "You have the most strangely cute toes"...he meant "strange toes" period. peanut head...

**don't get angry about my little Milne joke...I love Winnie-the-Pooh 'cause he's [sing along] short, fat and proud of that...I even have Tigger socks that I've had for years and years...

2 Months and Counting...

and ya'llllll know what I'm talkin' about...Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, you know...

That's right...Christmas!!!!!!

While sluggin' about the house recuperating, I've made a nice little dent in my Christmas Shopping, thank ye very much...

I figured I'd better go ahead and do some of my CS before the economy finishes imploding*...the banks shut down & our credit cards stop working**...all those little plastic cards will be good for is working as windshield ice scrapers***...

not that we'll have gas to go anywhere...buuuuuutttt, looking on the positive side of things, the creditors won't have gas to come and get my stuff...or will they? hmmmmmm...might be time to look into a P. O. box...

and it never hurts to get a little somethin' somethin' for yourself while shopping for others...

and Mr. Travis has a new Christmas DVD available for pre-order too...might have to get that one as well...we'll see...and I also took a Big Ol' Leap of Faith and ordered my first Elvis CD of any stripe...

BN.com is my friend...

So...what Christmas CDs will ya'll be buying this year?
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*am I the only who is afraid to even look at the 401K account any more? just checking in makes me feel like I need a brown paper bag to breathe into...and then I can use it for, um, cookie tossing...

**I don't care much for using debit cards over the Internet so I generally use my Visa that I try very very hard to pay off each month...because debt, along with the deepening RECESSION, global warming and the Iraq War, makes me feel like I'm about to have a heart attack...and hives...and eat my way through the fridge...

***and I don't believe I'm the only one who has ever stood in freezing temperatures with a credit card trying to carve myself an opening large enough to avoid running over small children and pets...and those crazy mean-assed squirrels...****

****yep, Squirrels get an asterisked asterisk...Squirrels will you Mess You Up...and they'll talk all kind of smack at you too...I had one squirrel that his favourite thing last year was to hang upside down on the dogwood tree outside of my kitchen window, glare at me and shriek all sorts of Squirrel Cuss at me...like I need that kind of attitude in my own kitchen...I Don't Heart Me No Squirrels...

What is This?...and those?

This is the detritus of a sick room...although, technically, I'm not sick...just recuperating from a hurried surgery...thus is explained my lengthy absence...just one more hurdle left to jump, knock wood, and all that is left is for me to heal and get myself ready for the Holidays*...

This is my new best friend...the cheapy little pillow you get at the hospital...it now is no longer a so much a pillow as an abdomen buffer-cushion-massive- compression device...I love this thing...and yes I know I could have at least asked for somebody to put a pillow case on it, but trust me...that hasn't even been a blip on the Radar of My Concerns...

I just decided to name the pillow Bumpy...

This is who is known as Teddy Weddy...found about 3 weeks ago in the local H/M's parking lot...bless his little heart...my husband actually hefted his 45 year-old-haven't-climbed-a-tree-since-at least-grade-school** behind up into a Bradford Pear to try and catch this little booger...I kept waiting for the tree, the cat and the husband to come crashin' down on my head...so I moved around to the other side of the tree...

This is who is known as Roxie Squidge...Roxie found herself lovingly dumped, along with her sibling whom we failed to catch, in the woods next to our house...well, I caught Roxie's sister/brother, but somebody afraid of a little cat bite, let him go...after I was already bitten...in retrospect, I guess that explains the whole climbin' the tree thing...redemption is a powerful motivator, friends...

catching a wild or scared cat is a little like driving through the woods at night with your lights off...it isn't a matter of if you're going to hit a tree, just a matter of how big the tree is and how much is it going to hurt...

RoxieSquidge and Teddys have been keeping me company...they're little enough so when they pounce on my stomachunderneathtwopillows it doesn't make me scream...just wince...but they're so cute it is worth a little pain to enjoy their silliness...

This is what I've been reading...and lovin', I might add...Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity***...I made a B & N run last weekend (not this weekend, but last weekend) in preparation for my downtime and just happened across the book...flipped through, read a few pages...love the attitude and pixs...get a copy...for me to actually pay full price for a book (well, less my B & N member discount of 10%) speaks volumes about how good I expected the book to be...and I'm not disappointed at all

judging by my book marker...oh yes, I trundled myself and Bumpy into my office to grab a pretty sheet of scrapbook paper, my ripply-edged scissors and made myself a cute little bookmarkish thing to mark down Things Worth Following Up On...

See? the list is long...

and these are just too cute to not share...even if I still take crappy photos...which I always will...

This is my husband...the ever elusive...I banged tapped on the wall for him to come in, hoping to surprise him for a good photo, but he is still too quick for me...the man has been Good as Gold...even went to H/M to buy me an over sized nightie (grey with pink coffee cups, pink roses and a pink ribbon...what can I say? I imagine there are men who wouldn't have even tried...) and over sized pink granny panties (yes, pink again, but also again, how many men would have even gone there? bless his heart, I have to tell this cute story...DH didn't know what granny panties are and he said no way was he walking up to an older lady to ask her to show him where the granny panties were...I laughed even tho' it was very painful and I was very nauseated at the time)****

This is the crappy view out of my bedroom window...the neighbor's half-painted Man Shed...the remains of the trees taken down about 2 months ago...I've got to do something with that area...but I'm makin' plans, people, makin' plans as I stare out this window for hours and hours and hours...

now, I've got a lot of blog reading to catch up on so if ya'll will excuse me...
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*I'll be doing some on-line catalogue shopping here shortly...

**although I'm sure willin' to bet good money there are a few college high jinx involving late nights, liquor, tree climbing and some others things I'd just soon not know about lurking around in the DH's past...

***but if you are expecting page after page of How-To's with Detailed Instructions, be forewarned you will be mightily disappointed...this is Not That Kind of a Book, thank you very much...

****the pink thing is only relevant because I own nothing pink...nothing...but maybe, subconsciously, DH would like me wear a little pink every now & again...well, I'll think about buying a pink t-shirt or a pink cashmere sweater to tool around in every once in a blue moon...just because he's a sweetheart of a guy...and because I'll take any excuse to buy cashmere...

Look What Happens IF...

you're nice to the lady at Lowe's who is stuck with unpacking all the Christmas Stuff out in the Formerly Garden Stuff area...thatttttt's right...faboo cardboard stars...that I have no idea of what to do with...Lord help...I mangled that sentence, didn't I? but I don't care...I've been under the weather and I'm claiming, um, Recuperating Editing Rights...

she had them in the trash bin! I had to save them...naturally, I'll move them about for maybe 5 or 6 years and then they'll end up in the trash anyway...or at least the recycle bin...

the following day I will be struck by a brilliant idea of what I could have used the things for...

because that, friends, is the Way of the Universe...

Miss Julie over at Gingerbread (yum) Pumpkin (yum, again...because I bought some Pumpkin Spice coffee this past weekend...that I just found when cleaning up the pantry...we'll have another talk some day about so called "deals" with spouses about putting up groceries in exchange for escaping toilet scrubbing duty...and then having to revamp the pantries/cabinets/fridge/freezer every time you use the "deal"...but like I said, that's another day) tagged me to throw 6 Random Facts About Myself Into the Universe...I know the Universe can hardly wait so here goes...

1) I'm absolutely in love with David Suchet's Poirot...the Poirot from before they cheapened the series with the new episodes...I'm sorry but you do not have to Sex Up Agatha Christie...whose idiot brilliant idea was that?

2) I will clap along with a crowd at just about any gathering...and I'll sing along and I'll dance along...now ya'll know to get seats far away from me...

3) I Heart Me Some Grey...I love grey weather, grey clothes, grey cars...I even can't wait until my hair that I unfortunately coloured an unfortunate shade of dark reddish brown goes completely silver so I can, snap, WearItWithFlair...I have not, however, ever seen an episode of Gray's Anatomy...probably because they spell "grey" all wonky...and considering Henry Gray was British, I totally don't Get It...

4) I never met the jar of jam or jelly or marmalade or curd that I didn't like...or chutney or pesto or whatever funky mix you can put in a jar...along as there aren't chunks of animal parts floatin' in jelly or something equally disturbing...

5) I have a Secret Desire to wear house dresses and chain smoke...this may be tied to the fact that I'm sick of perennially dieting, exercising and having to wear things with fitted waists...or at least the illusion of a fitted waist (the things they can do with elastic these days!!!)

6) I am Not Always Right...just enough of the time to Make It Seem That Way*

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*the rest of the time I just keep my mouth shut...that is the secret to not bringing your batting average down and appearing to have a FGGOE (Fairly Good Grasp of Everything)...hah...

Take It Easy, Ya'll

Sheila

Pardon This Interruption...

of a blogger who primarily likes to rattle on about little mundane things...

by a blogger who is simply fed up with A Whole Lot of Things...

(click to enlarge...created at wordle.net)

and let's not go into finger pointing...we're so far beyond that that we can't even see that in the rear view mirror...

so all I'm askin' is: Do any of ya'll have a couple of Middle Schoolers who might be available a couple of afternoons a week to help all the grown-ups get this mess straightened out? or even some 4th graders good with long division, multiplication, addition, subtraction...ya'll know...the basic stuff* that we all use to balance our piggy banks...

...because surely the little ones couldn't do a worse job than the bunch currently runnin' the show have...

actually, maybe we should just check the zoos for primates with drinking problems**...

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*basic stuff=apparently unimportant stuff once you enter certain job arenas

**better known as a barrel of drunk monkeys