Saturday, July 31, 2010

Friday, July 30, 2010

Guess where we are off to?


See ya'll in a couple of weeks!
XOXO

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Reason No. 8658 why you gotta' love Grammy Pammy...

Upon seeing THIS post:

"There is a fox next to the henhouse, a bear in the woods and a rabbit on the runway. Last week there was a DEER on the runway! It's not always safe and happy in Farmville, you know.

"I think I am going to think up more mysterious drama to have happen on the farm. Because nothing ever really happens in Farmville. You gotta' make it interesting. But then no one noticed and I finally had to make people aware of all the drama they were missing on my farm. You gotta' look close or you will miss it! Kind of like 'Where's Waldo'. Gotta' check back often to see what's going to happen next!

"By the way, do you think if I submitted a picture of my farm to Farmville that maybe I'd win the contest?"
- Grammy Pammy around 10:15 PM

Reason No. 8657 why you gotta' love Grammy Pammy...

She spent six hours last week redesigning her farm in Farmville (hey, it was hot outside!). It now has a runway, a cow jumping into a pool and a water slide for the neighborhood sheep.


But my favorite? The sign next to the runway that reads:

"FLY-IN" Next Weekend! Stunt-Flying, Crop-Dusting Demos & Races! Farmer's Mkt & Sandwich Cart Open! Contact Tower @123.4 to land!

And today at lunch she told my brother and sister:

"You'll have to stop by and see my farm sometime soon! You are welcome anytime!"

As if turning 30 wasn't painful enough!


My coworker just came into my office, pointed at my head and started laughing hysterically. The reason: one of my "crazy hairs" was sticking straight up and completely 100% void of color. Yes, that makes it WHITE. Not gray. Apparently, I am bypassing gray for stark naked whiteness. And that's not even the worse of it. It has FRIENDS. BEHIND MY LEFT EAR!

My mother found my first white hair back in late April. It was in approximately the same place. Too bad we didn't pull it out before it had a chance to reproduce!

I’m going home now to cry myself to sleep…

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Just incase you thought I was being harsh...

Trevor just informed me that he heard me fall in the toilet last night, and could barely contain his giggling.

Let's just say it was a good thing I didn't notice...

Toilet Troubles...


I’ve decided that Trevor and I need separate bathrooms. Other than the fact that we obviously have different quality control standards when it comes to personal hygiene , there is that age old problem surrounding the toilet seat.

The way I look at it: women need the toilet seat down 100% of the time, and men 50%. Therefore, the seat should stay down. Granted, Trevor has lived either by himself or with other men (brother, frat brethren and a hodgepodge of male roommates), so it isn’t in his nature to actually *remember* to put the seat back down. I’ve been working on this over the last year, though, and there has been slow progress.

But – for whatever reason – Trevor has forgotten to put the seat back down at night at least twice in the last week. Consequently, when I have gotten up to pee at three or four in the morning, I have fallen in. And there is nothing quite as unpleasant as having your bum hit toilet water when it is dark and you are barely conscious. Talk about a rude awakening! And then you have to do a brief sponge bath of the posterior, because toilet water – no matter how recently the toilet was cleaned – is just plain gross. There is no way you are getting back into bed without disinfecting the area first.

Then the anger sets in because, really?! Is it so much to ask that an effort is made to put the flipping seat down at night? And then you get back in to bed and kick your husband, because he was the one who left it up in the first place and caused your freshly showered a$$ to come in contact with toilet water at four in the morning. You also grumble and swear at him, and let him know how angry you are even though you know he fell back asleep almost immediately after he recovered from the shock of receiving a surprise kick to the buttocks in the middle of the night. But you are so mad that your blood is almost certainly boiling and it takes an hour for you to calm down enough to fall back asleep. Except by then, said husband is snoring and you start to give serious thought to that article you read yesterday about married people who choose to sleep in separate bedrooms. But even that won’t solve the root of the problem. What you need is separate bathrooms, or – at the very least – separate toilets. And so you start building your dream bathroom in your head, and that is the only way you are finally – and mercifully – able to fall back asleep.

Then the next morning, you have to get up half an hour earlier than you wanted to because you have to take another shower. Because you just aren’t 100% sure about the 4 AM disinfecting job you did three hours earlier. It seems practical to play it safe and shower than risk growing some kind of weird toilet bacteria on your backside over the course of Tuesday afternoon. But showering throws your whole morning off, and you feel grumpy. You know it is going to be a long day.

Stupid Trevor.

Monday, July 26, 2010

The accidental hypocrite...

On Saturday evening Trevor and I threw a small, backyard BBQ for a friend on brief holiday from the Peace Corps in Namibia. Consequently, we spent much of Saturday morning/afternoon preparing for the party, grocery shopping, cleaning the house, organizing things that needed organizing and doing what we could to spruce up the backyard. You know, typical backyard BBQ hosting activities.

One of my "jobs" was to bathe the dogs. All three of them. This task usually falls to me as I have a different tolerance level of doggie cleanliness than my husband does. It also happens that his dog, Alley, has the lowest coat maintenance of the three. Gypsy - with all of her allergies and generally itchiness - really needs to be bathed every other week or so. And Haskell has a habit of shedding like mad this time of the year. Frequent bathing allows me to scrub the heck out of him and remove as much of the dead hair as possible. I like to think of bathing Haskell as "indoor hairball control".

Anyway, I intentionally waited until around three to start bathing the dogs. This was mainly because I didn't want to be outside at peak sunburn time. Normally, I would have waited until after four to start such an activity, however, I couldn't wait that long because the first of our guests were scheduled to arrive around five. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to bathe all three of our awesome pawsome, and I wanted to allow at least an hour to shower and get myself ready for the party.

Since I knew to sun was still strong around three, I did a brief search of our house looking for sunscreen. I had just bought some for Trevor in preparation for our Fourth of July Resort Extravaganza, but none of it was anywhere to be found. It was with a little irritation that I remembered that I had just seen it last weekend at my mother's house in Cedar Hill. This is normally the setting where I have to beg, plead and grovel with Trevor to wear sunscreen while swimming in my mother's pool. Despite being so fair and white that he is more or less blue, Trevor is under the impression that maybe (just maybe) THIS time he will tan. It never works out that Trevor turns any color but bright pink, and I have made it my personal mission to lather my misguided husband up with SPF 85 at every opportunity to save him from himself (and the sun). And I try to set a good example by doing the same when I venture out into the summer sunshine. It is rare that I am without a bottle or two of various 30+ SPFs. But occasionally I do find myself woefully unprepared. Alas: Saturday.

Long story short, I got sunburned on Saturday afternoon while bathing the dogs. The burn is more or less isolated to my lower back; from essentially my hips to where my sports bra began. I guess I am lucky that more surface area wasn't affected. Never before in the history of dog washing has there been a silver lining to all that bending over.

Sigh...

Of course, Trevor had to show my sunburn to EVERYBODY at the party. My favorite was when he snuck up behind me, suddenly lifted my shirt so my sunburn was exposed and yelled, "See! I told you!" And my sister (a.k.a. The Queen of Tact) proclaimed my sunburn to be the "kind skin cancer is made of". Thanks, Amy. Thanks.

Ashamed of my sunburn, I slipped outside when no one was looking and broke off a branch of my aloe plant (originally planted with Trevor in mind) and snuck in my bathroom to apply the green goo generously to my back.

But the real low point was when I returned to the party. I walked into the kitchen just in time to hear Trevor announce that he no longer had to wear sunscreen because I was hypocrite and didn't follow my own advice.

"Lord, deliver me from the man who never makes a mistake, and also from the man who makes the same mistake twice."
- William James Mayo

Or - in Trevor's case - a man who makes the same sunscreen mistake every time we visit my mother's pool.

Alas! I can never win.

But at least the dogs are clean. For awhile.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Sillyness!

I only thought I'd get to see my husband this week:

  • Monday: Works until 8 PM.

  • Tuesday: Class.

  • Wednesday: Works late.

  • Thursday: You guessed it - working late. Again.


The silver lining: We leave after work on Friday for Colorado! Then I will have my hubby all to myself for two glorious weeks! Weeeeeeeeee!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

What about Bob?

Remember Bob? My baby Anise swallowtail caterpillar that came with one of my two fennel plants that I purchased at this spring's Texas Discovery Garden butterfly plant sale? The caterpillar that either became a chrysalis or met an early end in the belly of bird? Click HERE if your memory needs a little jogging.

Well, I am here to report that my fennel is no longer thriving. It is, in fact, no more. My new theory is that Bob grew up into a beautiful butterfly and decided to lay eggs on my fennel plants in an effort to give the next generation the kind of nurturing start in life that my backyard had provided. Except he underestimated the combined gluttony of five ravenous caterpillars on two somewhat puny, young fennel plants.

Hence:






Please note that one of the fennel plants is nothing but a limp, brown stem lying in the dirt.

Despite the fact that they caterpillars had effectively eaten my plants bare, they insisted on hanging out and munching away until the branches and trunk of the plant were also consumed. As a result, my pretty blue pot is now home to nothing but dirt and the occasional pop-up weed.

Very sad.

Something has also killed my passion vine.

I am starting to think that butterflies aren’t so sweet and innocent after all. I’ve heard of a plague of locusts, but never a plague of caterpillars. And yet all my host plants seem to have returned to dust. Hmmmm…

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Apparently...

...You cannot post the double rainbow video without also posting the double rainbow song that was inspired by said double rainbow video. At least not if Trevor has a say (and I am currently borrowing his computer, so I really don't). So without further ado, Trevor's new favorite song:

Seriously. You can buy it on iTunes. Trevor has.

I blame Trevor...

...for my lack of posting lately. Especially posts with more than five complete sentences. He is taking two classes this summer, and is frequently in need of both his desktop and MY LAPTOP.

For example:

Earlier this week, I was paying bills on his desktop while he was working on a project on my laptop in the dining room. I stole a glance at him from the office before quickly logging into my email. As if he could sense that my only real work on his desktop was done, Trevor came over and told me that he needed his desktop. So, I logged out, and went into the dining room to snag my laptop. I managed to get my laptop all the way back in our bedroom before I heard Trevor exclaim, "Hey! I wasn't done with that!"

Long story short: I now think of computer time as a precious commodity.

Granted, with Trevor's new insane work schedule, you would think that I would have increased access to his desktop. Not really the case. Trevor leaves his projects up and running on his computer at all times, and I have been living in fear of accidentally deleting something. On Monday, I snuck on his computer briefly before dinner (my laptop is apparently traveling with Trevor nowadays) to download a couple of songs on iTunes, and nearly had a heart attack when several of the Trevor-school-related programs that were running decided to suddenly close without saving. I was undecided about whether or not to tell Trevor when I met him and my aunt for dinner a few minutes later. Finally, my guilty conscious won out, and I confessed. Everyone at the table spent the rest of the meal worrying about what I may or may not have done to my husband's academic future. Luckily, nothing was lost. Or at least nothing was lost that couldn't be found and fixed in short order.

In better news, Trevor's Thursday class ended this evening, and his other class finishes up on Tuesday. Which means that Trevor's self imposed academic hell is almost over. By this time next week the only thing standing between Trevor and his MBA will be his capstone class that he is taking this fall. Stay tuned for a gazillion photos of Trevor sporting a super sexy cap and gown around Christmas!

But the best news ever?! Trevor and I both have two weeks off starting after work next Friday. That means only one, short week stands in the way of two glorious weeks hiking with our awesome pawsome in the mountains of Colorado! I am already planning to have plenty of these moments:

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

When Google Translator Fails Miserably...

From: Grace Richard
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 5:08 AM
Subject: From Miss Grace Richard.


From Miss Grace Richard.the douhter of Mr Kelvin Richard Address; lot 268 Rue de Bingerville Cocody Abidjan Cote D'Ivoire.

I know my message will come to you as a surprise,first of all i will like to say
compliment of the season to you,I am Miss Grace Richard.and writeing to you from ABIDJAN-IVOIRY COAST WEST AFICA.

I hope you will permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business with you.

I belive that you will be a trustworthy person that i can do business with and i must not hesitate to confide in you for this simple and sincere business.

My fathers Mr Kelvin Richard was a very wealthy DIAMOND DEALER,The economic capital of SIERRE LOANE,He was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of thier outings on a business trip,My mother died when i was very small and since then my fathers took me so spacial.

Befor the death of my father on OCTOBER 2005 in a private hospital here in ABIDJAN IVOIRY COAST, He call me on his bed side,and told me that he has the sum of($12.5Million US dollars)Deposited for me here and that he used my name as the first douhter for the next of kin in depositing of the fund.

Hi told me that i should seek for a forign partner in a country of my choice who will help me retrieve the fund and then transfer this money and use it for investments

I honourable seeking your assistance in the following ways:

1)To please come and help me retrieve the fund and to provide a bank account which this money would be transferred to.

2)To serve as a guardian of this fund since i am only 22 years old.
3)To make a feasibility study and recoment some worthwhile business investment which flourishes there in your country ,My approach is in view of our ill experiece in business.

This fund been the basis of our future and business ambition,your honest assistance and advise will be apprieciated so much while relying on your guidance for profitable business establishement in your country.

4)To make arrangemnet for me to come over to your country to further my educationand to secure a resident permit in your country.

Moreover,I am willing to offer you 20% of the total sum as compasation for your effort/input after the successful,I will forward to you the document concerning this deposit to your intrest to assit together on your signify intrest to assist me.

Please help me to get out of this terrible situation and the almighty God will bless you.

Anticipating to hear from you soon.

Best Regards

Miss Grace Richard.
________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 9:35 AM
To: Nora
Subject: FW: From Miss Grace Richard.


Dear Nora,

First of all I will like to say compliment of the season to you.

My fathers ALSO took me so spacial. I know you are jealous.

I will forward to you the document concerning this deposit to your intrest to assit together on your signify intrest to assist me.

-Deals

________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 10:21 AM
To: Deals
Subject: RE: From Miss Grace Richard.

WTF??? The last sentence is the very bestest!

Monday, July 19, 2010

I swear...

...I am still married and living with my husband. It has been rather hard to tell recently, though. Take last week's schedule, for instance:


  • Monday: Trevor worked late. Got home around 9 PM.

  • Tuesday: Trevor had class. Got home sometime after 10 PM.

  • Wednesday: Trevor worked late. Again.

  • Thursday: Class.

  • Friday: Trevor got home at a quasi normal hour (6:30). Saw husband briefly during dinner, but it was short lived. He crashed, and was seen snoozing on the couch not long after we got back home.

  • Saturday: Trevor worked until 8 PM.

  • Sunday: Technically spent the whole day with my hubby. Granted he was studying and I wasn't allowed to disturb him...


Needless to say, I am totally caught up on my Dateline mysteries, and I have made multiple trips to the bookstore to replenish my "Yet to be read" pile.

I miss my husband...

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Oy-Oy! The Envoy!


To the a$$hole who hit my parked car and drove off without leaving a note or insurance information -

It wasn't cosmetic. I couldn't open the passenger door without first opening the driver's side door. If I did it might cause more damage. Damage, might I add, that cost nearly $400 to fix.

One word: Karma (or should I say CAR-ma?).

Sincerely,
Deals

P.S. Jerk.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Strike a pose...



Vogue, vogue, vogue, vogue, vogue...

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Sunrise over Houston...

The view from my hotel room at 7 AM on Saturday morning...

Thursday, July 08, 2010

One month...

...until I turn the big 3-0.

(Groan)

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

For those of you wondering about Rosi...

Subject: Petfinder.com Pet Inquiry: Rosie PFId#16665147
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2010 12:09:02 -0500
From: Nora
To: Queenie Foundation


Is Rosi still available? I sure do hope so!!!
________________________________________
From: Queenie Foundation
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 12:55 PM
To: Nora
Subject: RE: Petfinder.com Pet Inquiry: Rosie PFId#16665147


Im sorry she is not the only pups we have left are the 2 rat terriers, Simmon and Pinky, bassett mix, Double Stuff, and the one ad a half year old doxie, Puddles
________________________________________

And the phrase of the day is...

"Phang! Phang! Phang!"

Sunday, July 04, 2010

Friday, July 02, 2010

I am surrounded by a$$holes...

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:34 AM
To: Deals
Subject: photo



________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:34 AM
To: Nora
Subject: RE: photo


You suck.
________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:35 AM
To: Trevor
Cc: Nora
Subject: FW: photo


See what I am dealing with here?!
________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:35 AM
To: Deals
Subject: photo 2



________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:36 AM
To: Trevor
Cc: Nora
Subject: FW: photo 2


Obviously, Nora needs more to do…
________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:37 AM
To: Deals
Subject: photo 3



________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:37 AM
To: Trevor
Cc: Nora
Subject: FW: photo 3


Dear, Trevor –

Please throw rocks at Nora.

Thank you.

Love,
Deals
________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:39 AM
To: Deals
Subject: photo 4



________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:39 AM
To: Trevor
Cc: Nora
Subject: FW: photo 4


Correction. Please beat Nora with a BIG stick.
________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:40 AM
To: Deals
Subject: photo 5



________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:41 AM
To: Trevor
Cc: Nora
Subject: FW: photo 5


Big stick beating needed NOW!
________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:41 AM
To: Deals
Subject: Photo 6



________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:41 AM
To: Trevor
Cc: Nora
Subject: FW: Photo 6


Dear Trevor,

Please tell Nora that I am no longer speaking to her.

Thanks.
________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:43 AM
To: Deals
Subject: photo 7



________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:44 AM
To: Trevor
Cc: Nora
Subject: FW: photo 7


Nora is an evil, evil person. Bringing poor Woo into it…now that’s just cold! COLD!
________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:45 AM
To: Deals
Subject: photo 8



________________________________________

From: Deals
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:46 AM
To: Trevor
Cc: Nora
Subject: FW: photo 8


I hate you.
________________________________________

From: Trevor
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 12:06 PM
To: Deals
Cc: Nora
Subject:



________________________________________

From: Nora
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 12:08 PM
To: Trevor
Subject: RE:


I LOVE TREVOR!!!
________________________________________