Booty Panties

I was out shopping today and while passing by the ladies underthings area of the store, noticed a large display of 'specialty' under garments designed to enhance the female form.  Now, I understand push up bras, waist cinchers, torso minimizers and the like, but today I discovered the 'booty panty'.  For those of you unfamiliar with this item, it is like a padded bra for the butt.  WHAT!?!?  Really? Are there women out there who actually think they need a BIGGER butt?  I have spent years, as have a good deal of my friends, worrying that our rear ends are too big.  We have toiled many hard earned hours with Jane Fonda raising our derrieres off the floor and clenching our cheeks (not those on our faces) to try to attain a smaller 'caboose'.    Only to find now that in some twisted, new fangled fad that we should be plumping up our bootys.

I was curious about these things so I stopped to take a look.  These panties look like someone put water balloons into pockets on the back.  I can't imagine wearing these things except maybe when I have to sit for a prolonged time on an uncomfortable seat.  I would worry that being unfamiliar with having a large 'back porch' I would knock things off tables and shelves just walking around.  Some versions of these things are filled with silicone and I really can't imagine having to sit on a big silicone filled seat.  Would one wobble around sitting on a pile of silicone?  List from side to side?  Sounds uncomfortable and weird.

I decided to check into some on-line research and found that there are many manufacturers and sites offering these padded wonders.  Amazingly there were even sites for plus sized women and one for a "do it yourself" padded panty.  Seems everyone is getting into this now.  Who knew?

I only know that I will not be donning these ever.  I am too close to the age where I am afraid that someone might mistake my padded underwear for adult diapers.

'Nuf said.



T. M. I.

WARNING: this post contains adult material which may not be suited for younger readers. Not sure it is appropriate for the older ones either, but I had something to say about "unmentionable" items.  Read at your own risk.

The American people seem to be curious about the intimate details of other people's lives.  Hence, magazines like:  The National Enquirer, Star, People, etc.  and all the ongoing on-line and television "celebrity" stalking shows aka Perez Hilton and Entertainment Tonight.  As far as I am concerned, I do not have a need to know what people are wearing (or not wearing), where they eat, who they associate with and certainly NOT the very intimate details of their lives.  I DO NOT wish to know this information about anyone in fact, including friends and relatives, which brings me to the point of this post.

PLEASE! Folks, I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom or house, just keep it to yourself (selves).  I don't need to know or share, even in the most innocuous way, any detail of your private life.  I am not a prude or right winged conservative, or particularly easily offended, but I just don't care to share!

As I travel around, I often visit relatives and friends.  These visits are never unannounced, so I would think that people could put certain, ahem, things away.  Sorry if I now sound like the "Church Lady" from the days Dana Carvey was on Saturday Night Live, but really, do you think I need to know that you have use of Preparation H????  Is it so hard to put it away in the medicine cabinet?  Hard to ignore when it is sitting on the bathroom counter.  And I'm not talking your personal, master bathroom--I mean the guest bath!  Or maybe you thought I needed it????   Ucky.

Also, to certain people (and you know who you are) I REALLY didn't need to see that container of, um, er, personal lubricant, sitting on the coffee table.  Really.  There are some images which will jump into your (my) mind, which should never show up there in the first place, are horrifying and hard to shake out in the second place. Not to mention that it didn't make that dinner your served me seem all that appetizing.  No offense.

So let's remember that some things are PERSONAL and let's keep them that way.  Thanks.

Carry on. (just keep it to yourselves)

I'm having a melt down--Part 2

Not sure why I have been chosen to visit relatives when their freezer decides to go into melt down mode, but it has now happened twice in less than six months.  On a recent stay with my folks, the freezer door to the big upright in the basement somehow was not shut all the way and things inside melted.  We discovered it when we went to get something out for dinner.  Well, we could have fed all the homeless people in town with what had defrosted in there.  The freezer was chock full of food including a lot of meat stored on the topmost shelf which dripped blood down onto everything belowand looking like a scene from a horror movie. Yuck.  

Unfortunately, unlike the last meltdown I experienced, most of this food could not be saved.  I wondered how this managed to happen to me twice as we grabbed trash bags and dragged liquid ice cream, bloody meat, thawed frozen veges and all sorts of other things out of the freezer to be thrown out. Things we thought we could save went into a myriad of coolers retrieved from the attic. My dad has a collection up there along with a collection of other stuff he has hoarded and stuffed up there.  What a giant mess!  There were at least 10 bags of really yucky food stuff lying on the floor  and leaking before we were through.  As the thought of dragging leaking bags of melting food through the house was rather unappealing I took them out the back door and dumped them in the wheel barrow for future disposal. 

We had to remove everything from the freezer including all the shelves and wash, dry and reinstall it all.  Then we had to wipe down and dry anything we were saving and put it back. Then clean the floor where the bags had leaked and then clean the coolers and wipe all the blood out of them.  I have now cleaned up enough blood to qualify for a job with CSI.  After five hours of this we finished up and had to get rid of the food.

Oh, did I mention that my folks live in a townhouse?  Getting trash out is a task as it has to be dragged from the back of the house, around the corner and up a steep hill to the front of the house.  I had a wheel barrow filled with bags and bags of icky food.   A really heavy wheel barrow.  With great amount of effort, I managed to trudge and shove it up the hill without turning it over (which it kept trying to do) and get it to the car. Yes, I had to put it in the car because a) there is only one trash can and it wouldn't all fit and, b) trash day was almost a week away.  Fortunately my dad has a van so I loaded all the bags into it.  Unfortunately, there was no place in his development to get rid of it.  I had to drive around looking for a dumpster to dispose of the bags.  I know, you are not supposed to use other people's dumpsters, but really, what was I going to do? I couldn't hang onto those bags for a week--ewwwwww.  So I found a nearby office park --it was after 5:00 and I knew everyone would be gone--and used their dumpster.  Please don't call the police on me!

And, finally, I had to clean the inside of the van where the bags had leaked in there!  Whew! What a day!

In the future, if I am going to come and visit, please be sure your freezer is working correctly and that the door stays shut.  I don't mind helping out, really I don't, but I've about had it with the melt downs.

The Runaway Wheelchair Incident

I have recently been visiting my father. He is a senior citizen. I would call him elderly but he would probably object to that and hit me with his cane.

Upon my arrival here I found out that he had managed to twist his knee and injure the artificial contraption that was implanted in his knee about two years ago when he had partial knee replacement.  Way to go Dad!  Don't think I've ever known anyone who could damage an artificial knee. We are very talented in my family (and not too graceful).

Unfortunately he was in a lot of pain so the day after my arrival I helped take him to the ortho's office where an x-ray confirmed that the plate attached to the upper leg area had indeed come loose.  The doctor explained that the only way to fix it would be to perform surgery and re-connect the plate to the bone.  Hope he has some gorilla glue! Surgery was scheduled and we proceeded to make numerous trips to the lab/doctors/radiation facilities for various pre-op tests and procedures.  Due to the injury my dad has only been able to get around on a walker or with a wheelchair. And while I am no spring chicken myself,  I have been providing assistance in taking him to his appointments as I can put the wheelchair into the trunk of the car and get it back out.  Hey, in life with the seniors the able bodied one rules!

So far I have been doing pretty good driving the chair (well except those few times I hit a wall trying to navigate a tight turn) but today things got, well got away from me.  We had an early morning appointment for more lab work at the hospital.  I parked the car, got the wheelchair out of the trunk and helped my dad into the chair.  I then turned around to close the trunk and when I turned back noticed that my dad had taken off down the slope of the parking lot.  At first I wondered where he was going.  I could see his feet dancing at the front of the chair and I thought that perhaps he had scooted himself along in an effort to move the chair.  Then I realized, with horror, that he was in a runaway chair!  I had forgotten to put the brake on!  Oh, crap, crap, crap!  I took off running after him but did not catch him before he hit the curb. Yikes! Luckily he didn't fly out of the chair and land on the ground.  Whew!  I grabbed the chair, got it turned around and headed in the right direction. And luckily we had a good laugh over it because in my family we have a strange sense of humor. In fact by the time we got to the lobby of the hospital we were laughing so hard we must have looked like a couple of idiots! His surgery is scheduled for tomorrow so, hopefully, I will master this wheelchair driving before I have to wheel him around with a leg full of stitches!

Wish me luck!

What's a Rose by any other name?

                                                                

I was just reading the lists of the a) most popular baby names and, b) most hated baby names.  Seems this year's top names include:  Jacob, Ethan, Michael, Jaden and Isabella, Sophia, Emma and Oliva.  On the most "hated" names list we had:  Hayden, Jayden, Kayden, Braden and Aiden (ok no one likes these rhyming names).  Girls names included:  Nevaeh ("Heaven" spelled backwards), Destiny (People dislike names that confer a virtue onto a child and many associated this name with exotic dancers.), Madison, Gertrude and Bertha (which are on the 'most hated' list).  OK, I am in agreement on the Gertrude and Bertha (who the heck names kids these any more? Other than Julia Roberts who named her daughter Hazel-ugh). It seems that "Elvis" has also left the building when it comes to baby names. "Elvis" has resided in the top 1,000 names for the past 55 years. Time for it to retire.

It seems that there is also now a backlash against "unusual" spellings for names and I am totally in agreement with that thought!  I grew up with a name that, while not so very unusual, no one ever seemed to get right. I hated it all through school and am still not fond of that name. I remember telling my mother one day that I disliked my name and she got highly offended as she thought it was a nice name!  Well, she didn't have to live with it!  I remember my daughter going through school with kids who had names like:  LeRoi (I thought this was just a weird spelling of Leroy but was told it was pronounced "Le" as in french "Le Baguette" and "Roye".  There was another kid whose name was "Nickalai" who the kids thought was named "Nickle Eye". They thought it was a strange name and envisioned a kid with a nickle in his eye.

I also hate it when folks get "cute" with names. I went to school with a kid named "Merry" because she was born on Christmas.  Just recently Bryan Adams named his new baby girl "Mirabella Bunny" because she was born near Easter.  Really???  Somehow I bet that she will not think that name is cute when she gets older, unless of course the Playboy empire is still around and ole' Hugh hasn't managed to die off yet.  Maybe he can marry her and make her a 'real' bunny! Ugh.

The article also mentioned that some people felt names like "Destiny" had a feel of a stripper name. Yeah, I think giving your kid a stripper name is a bad idea.  I worked with a guy once who named his kid "Misty Dawn". Talk about a stripper name! Either that or she was named for a race horse!

I understand that parents want to be "original" and provide their child with a name that is unique, but some common sense is needed!  So, here are my suggestions on thoughts to consider when naming your child:

1 - No weird spellings!  Most likely your ancestors came here from another country and altered the spelling of their names to blend in with the melting pot of America. Give them some respect and stick with that idea.

2 - No names that other kids will make fun of.  (This means you who named their kid "Floyd")

3 - Do not name your kid after a place! ie: Dallas, Brooklyn, Toledo, I don't care if they were conceived there! And believe me THEY won't want to know it either!

4 - No suffixes or prefixes to regular names (X-Shane-A)

5 - Probably not a good idea to name your kid after a celebrity that is popular now.  Things change with time and who would want to name their kid after Mel Gibson now??

6 - Cute names are not so cute when these children become adults.  So unless you are raising a stripper or future centerfold, no "Candy", "Brandy" or other names after food or booze.

7 - I am hopeful we have passed the era of "Moon Unit", "Dweezil" (Frank Zappa's kids) and names like "Tree", "River", "Rainbow". Children with these names will be clogging up the courts in the future petitioning to change their names to John and Mary.

And, finally, it doesn't matter so much what you name your kid.  Somewhere along the way they will either acquire a nickname ("Junior", "Bubba", "Chip", "Miley") or will create a new name for themselves to go with their chosen profession ("JayZ", "Lil Wayne", "Ludachris", "W") and that name you so carefully selected will be left in the dust like the '91 Geo Tracker they were conceived in.

Losing It

I am visiting my sister. She is just slightly younger than I and we are both over 50 at this point.  We are not quite as old as the ladies in the photo above, but we sometimes think we are.  Lately we have been having problems with communication.  The words just don't come out right.  For instance, the other day I was complaining that my "eggs were lakey". What I meant was "My legs are achy".  Of course that made much more sense than having my eggs be lakey. After all at our ages we have no more eggs!  My sister has also suffered from similar problems with word formation and was trying to say "dislexic" the other day and managed to say "lixdicksia". After I went and changed my underwear, as I had soiled it laughing at this strange turn of a phrase, I told her we really needed to see about this problem we were having. She agreed and we decided to drive to the store to buy some Ginko. Not sure that it would help, but it could't hurt.  When we came back home I exclaimed "Someone is here" as there was a car in the driveway. She looked at me like I had grown a second head and asked what I meant. I said "There's a car in the driveway". She said "Where?"  I said "right there" and pointed to the white sedan parked by the house. She turned to me and said "That is YOUR car!"  Suddenly I realized she was right, it was my car. But to be fair, I had a rental that week so I didn't immediately recognize it.  That's my excuse any way. Not sure what HER excuse was several days later when, once again we had been out to the store, and arrived home when she said "Someone is here".  I then looked at her like SHE had grown and extra head and informed her that was MY car parked in the driveway.

We are now religiously taking our Ginko. At all not sure it helping is.  Cripes now I sound like Yoda!

Easter is coming! Annual Peeps Contest!

That's right folks!  It's time once again for the annual Peeps Contest!  With Easter fast approaching The Washington Post is sponsoring its' annual contest asking entrants to provide a diorama featuring the popular and dare I say it? delicious marshmallow Peeps.  I am always amazed by what people come up with for these contests and this year was no exception.

I particularly love the one above with the cast of the Muppet Show although it was not the winner of last year's contest. I'm sure the entries for this year's contest will be just as creative. I would love to enter, but am just to lazy to put one together, although I am tempted to create a "Scandal" themed one featuring, of course, Olivia Peep.

I can remember getting Peeps in my Easter basket and that was back when they only came in one color and shape.  Yellow and shaped like little chicks.  Ah, yes! Those wonderful peeps who managed to get stuck to all the plastic grass in the basket rendering them pretty much inedible. Still we managed to peel the grass off and shove them in our mouths.  What better breakfast than sugar covered marshmallow and chocolate bunnies?

Evidently, Peeps are made of stuff that lasts forever.  Hmmmm, makes you wonder about eating them though.

It was a dark and stormy night

                               
There was a huge storm all over the south last night. I managed to drive through it. Over and over.
The storm had come through over night Sunday into Monday, When I left yesterday I thought I had it in front of me and, that it would move out before I got to it.  Unfortunately, I managed to catch up to it last night and ended up travelling into driving rain and huge lightning strikes.

The radio kept issuing storm warnings including tornado watches, flood warnings, power outages and trees down in the road.  My car was buffeted by the wind and it was hard to keep the wheels from moving all over the road.

I was headed east along with the storm and knew that I was due to make a turn to the south within an hour of the 6:00 PM report last evening.  As I approached the intersection where I was due to start driving south, the storm had started to let up and I breathed a sigh of relief that I could leave the storm behind.  I turned south and drove for about thirty minutes when signs of the storm reared their heads again.  The rain increased along with huge streaks of lightning which lit up the entire sky.  New reports on the radio indicated that I had somehow managed to turn back into the storm.  New reports of tornado watches and flood warnings were being issued from the radio.  Crap! This storm was sticking to me like a three year old hanging on his mother's leg on the first day of pre-school.

I decided to stop and eat dinner hoping the storm would blow out by the time I was done.  A Shoney's appeared up ahead and I stopped to satisfy a craving I had been having for pancakes and bacon. Nothing like comfort food after a few hours of tense driving.

By the time dinner was done the storm had moved on and I gingerly stepped over puddles in the parking lot to get to my car.  Aha, I thought, now I can drive a few more hours to make it to the half-way point in my trip. I hopped in the car and proceeded to drive south again. About an hour into the drive, the rain started up once more along with the lightning.  Renewed radio reports now indicated that the storm had tracked south and I was going to drive right into it-again!  The wind picked up and the rain began to really come down hard.  I gave up and decided to call it a night with a plan to stop at the very next decent hotel to come along.

This morning's news reports showed the devastation caused by the storm and made me glad I had stopped. The sun is now shining and today's drive should be fine.

Wiki Wacky

It's amazing what you can find when you have unlimited amount of time and a computer.  I recently discovered that there are just a ton of sites inspired by "Wikipedia".  Of course, due to the many recent news broadcasts, we are all probably aware of "Wikileaks", but did you know that there is a whole website devoted to the multitude of Star Wars fans known as "Wookieepedia"? 

Or how about a site devoted to the nerdy fans of the now defunct television show "Lost"?  Yep, you got it there is "Lostpedia".

And speaking of lost, if you happen to get lost there is "Wikimapia" to help you find your way.  If you have trouble figuring out how to do things you can always visit "Wikihow" which in case you don't find what you are looking for there, you can visit "Wikianswers".

Maybe you might want to visit Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida where I went one summer to see the mermaid show. Ok, that might be a stretch but I am getting a Wikiheadache.

Brain Fake Cupcake

I HATE scents that smell like food. There is a very simple explanation for this: my brain cannot differentiate between actual food smells and the scent of candles, oils or other "home" scents. Personally, I think there is a conspiracy between the manufactures of scents and bakeries and coffee shops. They are in cahoots to create these enticing fragrances that make us yearn for the actual thing so we will go out and buy some.  This happened to me just yesterday at someones home where they were burning a scented oil called "Cupcake". I had to have a serious discussion with my brain to ignore the diet breaking scent of freshly baked cupcakes piled high with fluffy frosting.  It went something like this (with my brain sounding much like cookie monster):

Brain:  YUM! I smell freshly baked delicious cupcakes!  YUM!

Me:  No, brain, that is not the smell of cupcakes--it is just a pretend smell of cupcakes.

Brain: NO! It is real cupcakes and I am ordering the mouth to start producing saliva so we can eat some cupcakes.

Me:  No, no, no. We are not going to be eating cupcakes. There are no actual cupcakes here! Stop it~!

Brain:  ME WANT CUPCAKES! ME WANT CUPCAKES NOW!

Me:  Absolutely not. We are not, I repeat, not eating cupcakes!

Brain:  I don't care what you say, I WANT cupcakes.  I will make you get me cupcakes.

Me:  NO! You never listen to me! Every time I say NO to cookies, cupcakes, ice cream -- you insist that we get some. And then when I say we must ride the bike and go to the gym you whine that you don't want to. It isn't fair!!!

Brain:  I am NOT listening to you I don't care what you say. I WANT the cupcakes. Nah, nah, nah, nah--not listening to diet and such. GIVE ME CUPCAKES.

END RESULT: yep, you guessed it---ate delicious cupcakes with wonderful icing. Arrrgggh! I never win.

So, please, if I am coming to visit you, I beg you, don't use scents that make me want to break the diet. It is hard enough as is with a brain that won't listen. Oh, and you probably don't want to use those ones that smell like margaritas or wine or daquiris either because God knows what I might do with those things!

Necklace and Breadbox

This getting older thing really stinks.  Now it seems that I am losing my hearing. Or maybe my ability to multi-task.  I was sitting at the dining table working on the computer with the tv on in the background. Was only partly listening to it as the 'free on demand' movie I had been watching had ended.  You know what it is like when you are only halfway paying attention to something but then you hear something that seems to register but not exactly in the right way?  Well, that's what just happened.  An ad came on for a new movie that could be rented on the cable Pay Per View movies and this is what I heard:

"And it's available at the same time as necklace and breadbox"

I raised my head up from the computer with a confused and quizzical expression thinking "WHAT was that?"
After a second I realized that what the announcer actually had said was: .......same time as Netflix and Red Box.  OMG! Someone get the room ready for me as I am sure I need to go to the home soon!  Good Lord! I am starting to understand my aging parents.

Friends, Memories and Sex and the City

I lost a dear friend this past year. She died before I had a chance to say goodbye.  We were friends for over 30 years and I will truly miss her.  I attended a memorial held by her sons at which they asked everyone to fill out cards with memories of their mother.  We had become friends when we worked together, (there was a gaggle of us, all around the same age and all single mothers) at the same company. One of the other ladies in our group attended the memorial with me and when asked for memories of their mom, we looked at her sons and said "Our lips are sealed".  We were a wild and crazy bunch and there are stories about those years which I will take to my grave.  I did tell them that we were the "Sex and the City" girls long before anyone had thought to write about it. They asked which one their mother was but I declined to answer. It was better for them to remember their mother as the loving, wonderful lady she was.  Besides, I didn't think I could explain why she was the Samantha Jones of our group. Just didn't seem appropriate.

I had lunch with one of the sons recently and he kept pushing for a story.  He knew all the characters involved as we had all been to each other's homes and had babysat for each other when needed.  I finally did tell him one story, and here it is and it's an honest to God true story.

We all worked for a company that managed apartment communities.  A couple of the ladies in our group were chosen to manage a brand new complex and had moved into the apartments and begun working on leasing up the community.  One evening the group of us had gathered together at the rental office in this community for a little get together.  As I recall there were several adult beverages consumed that evening and at one point the new manager exclaimed "Hey, the pool was finished and filled with water today---Let's all go take a swim:".  Of course no one had brought their bathing suit so we decided to go skinny dipping. We shed our clothes and ran out to the pool which was situated immediately behind the rental office. As a brand new apartment complex, there were not many apartments occupied at that time, but there were a few.  Of course we were all laughing and shrieking in the pool and making some noise.  At one point we heard sirens coming into the complex and we all jumped out of the pool and ran back into the office via the back door.  We had quickly thrown our clothes on when there was a knock at the door. It was the police responding to a noise complaint.  They had seen the lights on in the office and thought they might find someone in charge to speak to.  The manager answered the door and explained to the police that we had not heard anything and that they could leave as there was nothing to worry about.  Of course she was explaining this with wet hair dripping all over.  The rest of us hid in the back office and peeked around the door. The officer gave her quite a look but decided that he and his partner could leave.  They left and we all collapsed into a heap of wet hair and giggles.

No one was arrested, well not that night at any rate, and we all went on to have more adventures and get into and out of all kinds of trouble. But, my lips are now sealed, and those stories will not be repeated to protect the innocent, and not quite so innocent.

P.S. Don't ask me which "one" I was. I'll never tell!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to School

As I think I have mentioned, funny things happen to me. For no particular reason.  I guess it runs in the family and sometimes there are even stranger coincidences.

My cousin told me this story when I saw him recently:

Back when Clinton was in office he came to visit the elementary school my children were attending.  It was my day to pick them up and when I arrived at the school it was all on lock down as the President was still there.  I drove around and around and couldn't find a place to park.  Then I remembered that I could drive over to the neighborhood next to the school and park there and walk back to the school. After I parked on the street nearest to the school, I had to walk through a little section of woods to get to the building.  As I was walking through the woods I heard the unmistakable sound of a growling dog. I stopped walking as I didn't want to be attacked by this mean sounding dog and suddenly there appeared several armed men wearing bulletproof vests and looking very official.  They demanded that I accompany them back to their command unit where I had to explain that I was only there to pick up my kids. I had also just come from work and was wearing my usual suit and tie and had my work issued ID on me, but that didn't seem to impress them.  After several calls to confirm that I was who I said I was, they finally let me go, but my family was embarrassed and harassed me about it for days. Needless to say, I did NOT get to meet the President.

And here is my story:

When Clinton was in office I was selling real estate.  One day I received a call from the local high school asking that I come by the school and pick up one of my "For Sale" signs that some of their students had apparently appropriated from one of my listings and decided to place in front of the school.  They also requested that I come to get it right away as the President was visiting the school that day (POTUS seems to have visited a lot of schools back then). My office was about 40 minutes away and by the time I arrived at the school, there were lots of guys hanging around with earplugs in their ears.  They stopped me at the entrance to the school and asked me to explain why I was there. Did I have a child attending the school? No, I explained, I was there to retrieve a "For Sale" sign.  They looked at me like I had totally gone over the edge and I had to explain the whole story of how the school had called me to come and get the sign.  I was escorted to the office by one of the agents who then escorted the school secretary and myself to a closet where they had stashed my sign.  I had to lug it out to my car by myself. And, needless to say, I did NOT get to meet the President (either). 

I guess it is lucky for us that the Secret Service did not connect us as I'm sure we would have been investigated for some kind of conspiracy.

A funny thing happened on the way to dinner

I seem to have things that occur in my life which are always a little wacky.

Here is an example of things that seem to happen only to me:

A few years ago I had a professional, formal, dinner dance to attend. I had purchased an absolutely gorgeous dress along with all the accessories and planned to wow everyone that evening. And I thought that maybe, since he was going to be there, I could show off and rub my ex’s nose in it a little-make him see what he was missing.  I had also recently purchased a vintage, little red convertible and decided to drive it to the event. (I was REALLY planning to impress).  So I decided early that afternoon I would wash and wax the car; get it glowing and lovely.  I went to the auto parts store and purchased all the necessary items to clean and wax the car, including a special bottle of car wax that came in red to match the car. It was supposed to add color and luster to the finish.  Well, I spent hours cleaning and waxing that car.  It really shone when I was done with it; I was proud of the effort.  I went into the house to shower and get ready for the evening when to my surprise and dismay I found that the red car wax had also dyed my hands red.  OH NO!  I scrubbed them with soap and a scrubby:  still red. I scrubbed then with Lava soap. No luck.  I tried mineral spirits.  Now my hands were getting really raw and sore in addition to being red. I think I actually made the red worse as my hands were so irritated that they were turning scarlet. These are times I refer to as my “Lucy” moments as it seems that she and I share a propensity for getting into various ‘jams’.  I started to panic. The only thing I could think to do was to wear gloves.  Now, no one wears formal gloves anymore and I knew I would stand out and not in the way I wanted but I did have an old elbow length pair that had belonged to my mother so I dug them out.  I decided that I would try imitating Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” and wear the long gloves with my gown.  Luckily the gown I had purchased was red, strapless and satin so not too far from the gown she wore in the film.  I also had images of Blaze Starr in my head and hoped no one would confuse me with a stripper. And I guess it matched my red hands, not that I was planning to show them off to anyone.  I got dressed and donned the gloves, held my head high and attended the dinner. 

I did run afoul of the etiquette rule that one should remove their gloves when eating, but since no one had seen opera length gloves in such a long time I was pretty sure no one would even know that rule existed.

I managed to pull off the event even though I garnered a lot of strange looks and at least one guy wanted to know if I was with the 'entertainment'.  I also ended up being the subject of several conversations for the next few years of the event as other women wondered what I had been thinking with those gloves and whether I was “funny” or trying to set a new fashion trend. I am pretty sure I did not impress anyone in the way I wanted to. Still I got to drive the cute little car!

My hands did eventually return to their normal color. Thankfully.

What's that smell?

My grandson is in a stage where he likes to smell everything. He smells things before he eats them. He smells blankets, shoes, the air outside, the dogs, EVERYTHING!  One of his favorite questions is "What's that smell?"

I walked into the house this morning after dropping him off at school and the first thing that popped into my mind was "What's that smell?"  And for good reason. The house stunk!  Peee ewww! What the heck is that smell?  It definitely smelled like crap.  I mean really crap-not just the saying.  I checked to see whether the little dog, who has been inside lately as it's too cold out for her, had poo pooed in the house.  Couldn't find anything.  Decided to check the fire in the basement as it would need more wood and then it hit me.  As I opened the basement door the odor became worse and I realized what I was smelling.  COW POO! Ugh.

I immediately flashed back to last fall when the relatives where here cutting up a large tree which became firewood for the house.  The tree was in the cow pasture and some of the limbs had fallen into cow pies when the tree was being taken down.  I guess that one or more of those pieces were some that I had thrown into the fire this morning before leaving the house.  CRAP! (really)  Now the whole house smelled like the cow pasture. Yuck! I grabbed a can of Lysol and went about spraying the house top to bottom.  It helped somewhat. I then decided that I didn't want to have a repeat of the "od'dujour" so proceeded to spray the wood pile with Lysol.  Not sure if will help but I sure don't want the smell of burning dung hanging in the house again. Ewwwwww!

OK I am going to look online to see whether there is a product you can put in with the wood when it burns to improve the smell.  Not sure what might work. Maybe incense?  But then the house would smell like my college boyfriends apartment who had a bunch of stoner roomates who constantly burned incense thinking it covered up the odor of the pot.  Didn't really work. Probably wouldn't work on cow poo either.

CRAP!

(really folks I don't make this stuff up! it really happens to me!)

The Winter of My Discontent

I know I have mentioned this once or twice (ha ha) but I truly hate snow.  There is about 10" on the ground right now and it is still snowing.  It snows here like it rained in "Forrest Gump"  --

To paraphrase Forrest:  One day it started snowing and it didn't quit for months.  We been through every kind of snow there is. Little bitty stinging snow, big ol fat flakes of snow, snow that comes down so hard you can't see through it, snow that falls so lightly it barely seems to reach the ground. There was snow that snowed sideways and it even snowed at night.

There are icicles hanging off the gutters that could kill someone if they fell off and landed on them.  There are large patches of snow just hanging off the roof waiting for the right temperature to fall off (and probably waiting for me to walk under it).

It never gets above freezing so the stuff just stays and stays.  More snow just comes and lays on top of it.

I have even seen it snowing when the sun is shining. What's up with that???

I understand that the Eskimos have 100 words for snow. I just have one, but will refrain from using it as this blog is not classified for mature audiences only.

And that's all I have to say about that!

My Morning

Good Grief! Monday morning!  Up at 7 to start the day.  Let the dog out and get the 3 year old up for day care.  This is a kid that hates to get up in the morning.  I steel myself for the morning tantrum and wake the sleeping monster.  This first thing he says to me is: "I don't want to go to school".  Of course not, why should today be any different than any other day? He usually doesn't want to go to school. Some days I let him stay home with me but I had a lot to do so he needed to go.  I explained that he needed to go to school and went to get clothes to get him dressed. When I returned he was no where to be found.  A thorough search found him hiding under the bed and I had to beg and threaten until he came out and got dressed.

Great! Got that accomplished.  I gathered up some bags of trash that needed to go out (remember this is a farm and the trash is not right outside the house--the can is up by the street).  I tossed the bags in the bed of the pickup and proceeded to get in to start the engine to warm up the truck.  When I opened the door to get in, the large black lab decided he wanted to go along and jumped into the truck.  I yelled "NO" at him but that didn't faze him. I grabbed his collar to try pulling him out but it only resulted in him slipping his head out of it and jumping into the back seat.  Now this is a 100+ lb. dog and when he decides something there is no moving him.  I pulled on his legs and tried pushing him but couldn't get him to budge.  It took going into the house and getting a treat to entice him with to get him out of the truck.

It had snowed the day before and since I stayed home all day there was snow and ice on the windshield.  I looked for the ice scraper but couldn't find it in the car.  Oh heck! I went into the house and grabbed the pancake turner and proceed to use it to scrape the window. It only produced moderate results, but better than nothing.

Back in the house the 3 year old had climbed onto the sofa and fallen back asleep.  Darn! I had to wake him up again, get his coat on and trudge out into the snow to get him in his car seat.  I managed to do this without too much hassle and we took off in the direction of school, stopping so I could put the bags of trash in the can.  Unfortunately, the lid was frozen to the can and was stuck tight.  I tried to wrestle with it, setting down the bag of trash to free up both hands, and but could not get the top off.  By now it was almost nine and we were already late for school.  I decided to worry about the trash later and jumped in the truck to try to make it to school so we were not too late.

Part way to school my grandson informed me he felt sick.  Sometimes on the way to school he seems to get car sick.  Not being sure whether he was really feeling sick or just trying to scam me into letting him go back home, I pulled the truck over and turned around to try to estimate if he was going to be OK or not.  We had a short conversation and he advised me that would be OK.  I turned back around, headed out onto the roadway and then heard the unmistakable sound of vomiting in the back seat.  I stopped the car again and saw that he had managed to throw up all over himself.  I did feel bad for him but this was not a good start to the day. He looked at me with his watery eyes and I felt awful. He had vomit all over him, the car seat and the truck seat.  I checked the glove box for napkins, found two, and tried to wipe him down which didn't really work and, got vomit on my hands. Ugh. He then informed me he WANTED to go to school.  GREAT! He was a mess. Quick thinking on my part lead to a trip to Walmart to purchase clean clothes because Walmart was closer than home.  I paraded a vomit covered kid into the store to the horror of other shoppers and staff. My goal was to get new clothes, get him changed and leave the store as fast as possible.  This turned out to be a real challenge. I decided that this could be a game for xbox or Nintendo--where you have to take a disgusting child into a store, weave around shoppers and aisles, keep him away from toys and candy and still manage to purchase the clothes, get them on the kid and successfully leave the store.Ha! Good luck with that one!

With new clothes in hand I dragged him into the ladies room and proceeded to strip him down and clean him up. If you have never had to remove a pull over shirt covered with vomit off a kid you are lucky. Once I had him down to socks and underwear I tried to wipe him off with wet paper towels. You can say all you want about Walmart ruining the American worker and closing mom and pop stores, but I will always be thankful that they actually have paper towels in the restrooms instead of just those crappy hand drying machines.

Of course on Monday morning at Walmart there are plenty of senior citizen ladies coming in and out of the rest room and eyeing me and this kid.  I am sure they were remembering days that they had to do this with their own children and they smiled at me as they passed.  I suppose they thought they were being nice but know that somewhere inside they were really snickering at me having to go through this.  It is a mom thing.  Once you have done these things yourself you tend to snicker at others who are stuck doing it.  It is a self satisfying snicker as you are thankful your days of cleaning up kids covered in vomit are over. One lady stopped to talk to me to inquire how old my grandson is, comment on big he is for his age and generally have that kind of chat that ladies have in restrooms while one of them is cleaning up a half naked kid. My grandson took this opportunity with my attention being elsewhere to take off running out of the ladies room into Walmart. He will make a great baseball player some day as this kid could steal second base in a heartbeat.  I take off after him leaving the grandmotherly lady hanging in mid sentence in the ladies room and manage to tackle him near the self check out line.

I wrangled him back into the restroom and got the new clothes on, bagged the cruddy ones in the Walmart bag and left the store. Of course the three year old had no coat as at this point I couldn't see buying another one.  The car was fortunately warm and I popped him in it and proceeded with all due haste and got him to school at the crack of 10 am.  Whew.

Thinking that now I could salvage the rest of the day and get things done I drove home only to be confronted with trash strewn all over the front of the driveway where I had left the bag on the ground earlier.  Thanks dogs!  Sheesh!  I decided I would come back and clean it up later and pulled into the driveway at the house to find a deer head, horns and all, staring at me from the middle of the drive.  REALLY! This caps off my morning. Thanks dogs! AGAIN there is something dead in the yard.

I wonder if it is too early to start drinking.

The Past Year of Living "Homelessly"

It has now been over a year since I lost my job, gave up my home, put all my stuff in storage and started this experiment to see if I could live without a residence for a year.  It has been interesting and I am proud to say that I have made it!  This doesn't mean I have been living on the streets or like a "bag lady".  I have been very lucky to have a small rv trailer to live in and homes of friends and family to stay at from time to time. 
This has been a real learning experience.  I learned that you can live a very simple life without a lot of "stuff".  Having an 18 foot trailer requires that you pare your life down to the real necessities.  It made me take a hard look at what I actually "need" and what stuff I can live without. I found that family and friendships are more important than any 'thing' I have owned.  I found that there is joy in each day if you just look for it.  I have found that people can be truly amazing and giving, even total strangers.

 I spent the first part of last year living in an RV park with some snow birds and a lot of folks who just live in their RVs due to financial circumstances or just lifestyle choice.  The owners and managers were incredible--helpful and friendly.  There was a fellow who lived in a panel van in the park.  He had very little and wasn't in the best of health.  At one point several of the guys in the park got together and built him a wooden deck with picnic table and awning cover so he could have a nice place to sit outside. They didn't ask anything for this, just did it out of the goodness of their hearts. I ran into similar folks in a small town in North Carolina when my car broke down.  Total strangers who offered their help and kindness to a passing traveller. Amazing!

I visited two of my sisters for awhile and we all spent more time together than we had since we were kids. I rediscovered the closeness that sisters can share while we laughed over fond memories and shared recipes  for dishes our mother used to cook. I also reconnected with my step brother and his wife whom I had not seen in many, many years and it was nice to become friends with them again.

Last summer was spent at the Jersey shore working for a dear friend. I lived in my trailer on the farm and slept with the soft nicker of the horses in the barn.  Some days were challenges but it was hard to complain when surrounded by the warm sandy beaches, ocean breezes and good and caring friends.

The fall and winter have been spent at yet another farm helping family during a military deployment.  I have spent wonderful days with my grandson. Days I will always cherish.  This is something I would never have been able to do if I had been working away at my career.

I have learned to live on less, appreciate the small things in life, get reacquainted with family and develop an appreciation just for living each day.  It has been a real "stop and smell the flowers" year.

I was very lucky to have had this year and very blessed that I was never actually homeless unlike many people have become in this poor economy.  Homelessness is a very real problem and one which still needs to be addressed.  I was happy to find a blog by a young woman who helped inspire me to begin writing this one.  She is a true success story and if you can, please visit her blog at: http://www.girlsguidetohomelessness.com/. Her blog has now become a book which will be on sale soon.  She is very brave and resourceful and I'm so glad things are working out for her.

While I thought that once the year was over I would go back to living my former life, I have decided that I am not ready to resume it.  That life seems very shallow now and I want to continue this journey.  My time at the farm is almost up and I have been offered several new opportunities to travel to new places and experience new things. So I believe I will take another trip around the sun on this journey of life and see where it leads me.  I stopped making plans awhile ago, and while not a very religious person, almost daily I ask God to simply place my feet on the path he wants me to take and I will follow it.  So far he has done a bang up job.

I want to thank everyone who assisted me in this endeavor, whose love and support helped me along the way and without whom this year would have been so much less. You guys all know who you are.

So stay tuned for the further adventures of Wanderwoman! I promise to be funny again soon! (well I am always a little 'funny' (maybe strange?) but will be humorous again!

Hello China, Russia, France, Toledo and Hackensack!

I check my  blog stats from time to time to see if anyone is reading this thing.  One of the things the blog stats provide is a breakdown of countries where the audience is from.  Lately I have had a number of readers from Russia, China and France.  I assume that the blog is translated into those languages(?) or maybe they can all read English (?)  Anyway - to all my foreign readers!  Hallo! Welcome! I should add the following disclaimer for those who may read this from overseas:  PLEASE NOTE:  Actual life in America may vary greatly from that described herein. Reading of this blog may result in laughing with resultant release of bodily gases.   But seriously, I would be happy to be a "blog ambassador" to all the foreign readers and will gladly answer any questions you have about the US. One question I have heard often from citizens of countries outside the US is:  "Do Americans really all walk around carrying guns?"  I can gladly answer this.  If you are a terrorist or a Somali pirate--the answer is YES.  Otherwise, it is true that many people in this country are armed on a daily basis. These include police officers, drug dealers, cowboys, and gangsters. But then there are many people who are not. These people are often referred to as "Victim".



The blog stats also let me know how some of the blog readers came to find my blog.  To the person(s) out there who stumbled in here by using "Mommy Spanking" in their search engine, I am sorry you were dissapointed that this is actually not a porn site.


To my loyal readers and those who follow Facebook, I have added a page on Facebook for Wander Woman 0001. Feel free to "friend" me there.


Ok, I have now mentioned guns, spanking, drug dealers, Facebook and porn in this post. I can't wait to see how this drives new readers to my blog! LOL!

Help! I'm having a melt down!

My daughter, grandson and I happily arrived back to the farm this evening from our journey south for the holidays.  Unfortunately all was not well.   I decided to go to the basement and check the freezer to find something for dinner only to find that the items on the very top had defrosted and the ice (this is not a frost free type freezer) was melting. Oh No!  I am in for another melt down. What is it with my family and freezers? We checked the outlet—it was working so that wasn’t the problem.  We thought maybe there had been a power outage while we were away, but checking the stuff in the refrigerator’s freezer, we found it had not thawed out. There was bad news:  The freezer was kaput, and good news: most of the food had not yet thawed out. Another day away and we would have had a scene from CSI down there.  My daughter and I quickly set about digging out all the food (mostly frozen meat of various types) and putting it in boxes, coolers, laundry baskets and whatever we could lay our hands on.  I did suggest that anything that we couldn’t immediately identify be trashed and luckily she agreed so we were able to get rid of some of the “mystery meat” in there.  I grabbed two large, black trash bags and tossed the "unknown meat" into them.  Wow! A chest type freezer can hold a lot of meat!  In digging out the meat I did notice that she had an inordinate amount of sausage.  I asked why she had so much sausage and the reply was that it came with the meat from the pig that had been butchered.  No one in the family likes sausage so it sits in the freezer.  I think I will find someone who wants it and get rid of it! We needed to save our bacon (but not the sausage)!

We then started calling friends and relatives to inquire whether they had any extra room in their freezers that we might use.  However, in farm country, in winter, most people have their freezers full.  While it was cold enough (read: freezing) outside to store the meat for the night we were afraid that animals (particularly the wild dogs) would get into it.  I wasn’t relishing the idea of picking up dead meat out of the yard the next day when my daughter remembered that there was an old freezer out in the shed. She went out to see if it was working and she came back with good news! It appeared to be working!  So we dragged the boxes and laundry baskets of meat up from the basement, through the house and loaded up the car to haul it out to the shed.  Of course there is no light in the shed so we had to use the car’s headlights to see what we were doing.  Long about now I started looking over my shoulder for Jeff Foxworthy as his tag line "You might be redneck if......." was running through my mind.  We grabbed frozen hunks of meat and literally tossed them into the freezer (I am not looking forward to going out there to get dinner in the future!)  The stuff is all in there but in no particular order or any resemblance of neatness.  Just a bunch of frozen hunks of meat, some in plain old zip lock bags.  I wonder if Jeffrey Dahmer's freezer looked somewhat like this.

In the meantime my 3 year old grandson was standing on the front steps yelling out to us wondering what we were doing.  I yelled back for him to go into the house as he was barefoot and did not have a coat on and did I mention snow on the ground.  We yelled back and forth for awhile (again looking for Jeff Foxworthy) and he finally did go inside. Unfortunately, when we came back to the house we found that he had locked all the doors and we couldn’t get in.  My daughter and I ran from door to door trying the handles and calling for the 3 year old to open the doors.  He seemed more interested in watching Sponge Bob and didn’t want to let us in.  Guess he was mad that we didn’t let him come out and play with the frozen food.  This was a problem.  People who live in the country don’t lock their doors. In fact my daughter doesn’t even have a key to her house.  They bought it at foreclosure and never did get keys to it. (oh dear, I KNOW that Jeff Foxworthy is here somewhere)  I then remembered that the basement door was probably open but I had tossed some firewood down the outside steps earlier so I could drag it into the house (Oh, God, I AM a redneck now) and it was sitting in a pile at the bottom of the steps covered with a tarp.  I decided to try climbing down the stairs and over the wood which was something like skiing down the side of a very bumpy hill and slamming into the door at the bottom. Luckily that door was unlocked and I gained access to the house.

By this time it was about 8:30 and any thought of cooking dinner had "melted" from my mind.  I recalled that there were two (now no longer frozen) pizzas that had been at the top of the freezer and threw them in the oven.

I wish I could say “it is good to be home”. Hah!  We ate the pizza and collapsed into bed tired from both the long trip home and effort of dealing with the freezer problem. 

Happy New Year from the Road!

Well in true form, I spent New Year's Day travelling.  Drove back to the frozen north spending first 12 hours and then 7 hours the next day on the road.  I am destined to go places! Just not sure where they always turn out to be!

I do love driving around the country.  It is so much more pleasurable than flying, which I hate to do. I don't mind the actual flying so much, although the very crowded condition of planes these days is a deterrent. I hate the whole process of flying.  I hate having to check in, go through security, wait to board, worry that some idiot will drop their bag on my head as they load it in the overhead bin and then seeing the whole process repeated once the plane lands. I would gladly fly around if I had my own private jet! Since that is not going to happen, I choose to drive.

Driving lets me stop when I want, eat when I want and what I want and see things I would never have seen otherwise.  I have had more adventures driving around the country than anyone on a plane ever could.  I have stumbled onto great finds including wonderful restaurants, festivals, scenery and just great times! It is fun to meet new people from different areas and see how they live their lives.  I have, however, found a number of riddles on my travelling, to which I am still seeking the answers.  Many seem to concern shoes, but shoes are, after all, a big part of my life. So here are the riddles. If you know the answers please enlighten me!

Why do you find one shoe in the middle of the road?  How does someone lose just one shoe? Were they hanging their feet out the car window and one fell off?  Were two people fighting in the car and one threw a shoe at the other and it went out the open window? Was someone walking down the road and their shoe came off?  I can't imagine how this happens.  And if you lost a shoe in the road wouldn't you stop to get it? Why not? This is a total mystery to me. Although I can attest that I have lost one shoe myself when I was in a car accident many years ago.  It was a fairly bad accident and I was trapped, injured in a crushed car. The firemen had to come with the jaws of life to cut me out of the car. When the ambulance workers lifted me out to place me on the stretcher I felt one of my shoes fall off and asked them to get it.  I was bleeding from a number of areas and covered with broken bits of glass and probably suffering from internal injuries.   They looked at me like I was a lunatic and probably thought I had brain damage (which is a possibility with or without the car accident) but I didn't want to lose that lovely, black peau de soie pump. (see shoes are really a big part of my life!) The shoe ended up on the road, in the rain.  I morned for it for some time.

Also, I see a fair amount of shoes dangling from overhead wires.  I assume that some perpetrator(s) put them there to taunt the shoes owner, but why are they still there?  Aren't there wire maintenance people out there who come and take them down after awhile?  What caused the shoes to be tossed up there? Surely there there are poor, starving people somewhere in this world who need shoes (my mother always swore there were poor, starving children in the world who would love to have the dinner I was turning my nose up at) Seems a waste to have shoes just hanging on wires.

Of course, since I have a strange brain that works this way, I conjure up images of poor children running around the streets of a third world country wearing all sorts of strange shoes which have been saved from wire dangling. Maybe we should start a new charity which rescues these shoes and sends them to poor, starving children. I can see the tv ad now -  Won't you please help rescue these shoes?  Some poor starving child in need could use these shoes. Please donate now so we can purchase ladders and postage to save the shoes and starving children! Maybe we could also rescue the abandoned shoes in the middle of the road and maybe we could pair them up and send those shoes to the poor, starving children.

Anyway, the mystery of the shoes remains unsolved. I won't rest until I know the answers!

Happy New Year from the road!