Morbid?

What happens to people's blogs after they die?

Is there a time limit on them, where they "poof" into nowhere if they are never updated again?

No, seriously. What will eventually happen to all of these blogs?

Stupid Question of the Day?

Me: "Tiffany went home sick today and discovered she was the victim of a burglary."

Someone Else: "Did they take anything?"

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Are you serious? She was the victim of a burglary, not a trespass. Ugh. Of fucking COURSE they took something!

You've GOT to be Kidding Me!!!!

Lat night, the day after my plumbing mania weekend, I noticed that the floor was kind of wet in Abby's bathroom. I thought it could have been one of two things. Either the faucet I installed suddenly developed a leak where there was none before, or Marti had gotten out of the shower and left some pretty massive puddles in front of the shower as he dried off.

I checked the sink, and there were no leaks to be found, so I wiped up the floor and chalked it up to male oblivion.

In the morning, Marti took Abby in there so she could go pee, and I heard her begin to protest because the floor was all wet.

I bolted out of bed and ran in there, knowing that there had to be something else wrong.

Would you believe that Abby's toilet (which, if you check the list, was NOT one of the original projects!) suddenly developed a leak where the tank attaches to the bowl? Yes, the day after I complete every imaginable plumbing task in the entire house, ANOTHER thing goes wrong.

Thank God for shut off valves and extra toilets in the house!

Plumbing Mania!

This weekend I went OFF on our plumbing! I've been "dealing" with the faults and failures that the original plumbing has been throwing my way, but not any more! This weekend I stared it in the face and said, "BACK OFF BITCH!"

It started with a blown out garbage disposal last week. THAT needed to be replaced, so I figured why not the kitchen faucet that has also been giving me fits? (Yes, I wrote about this part before, so you are right in thinking this is familiar.)

In the process of choosing a new faucet, I ended up signing myself up for not one, but TWO faucet installations, because I changed my mind after the first one was installed. Also, the garbage disposal I installed had a defect (go figure!) so I had to start from scratch and do that ALL OVER AGAIN, too!

After pulling an all-nighter on Friday night and working well into the weekend after that, I managed to complete the following:

1. Successfully replace kitchen faucet
2. Successfully replace garbage disposal
3. Successfully reinstall reverse osmosis system
4. Half-ass-edly deal with sinking kitchen cabinet base due to previous water damage
5. Successfully fix downstairs guest toilet (again) (finally)
6. Successfully reintroduce the concept of hot water to the master bathroom shower after a year of just using the second bath instead.
7. Oh, what the heck! Just replace the faucet and drain in the second bath while you have the freakin' tools out, you plumbing fiend!!!!!

Yes, I was an animal this weekend! And it feels damned good to have all of this stuff done finally! I waited to post about it until I got into my own shower and felt hot water again. It's real. I have reclaimed my bathroom!

My next plumbing project (barring any plumbing fiasco) is to replace all the shut off valves with ball valves so I can KNOW if they are in the off position or not by looking at them. I HATE the normal knob style that homes come with!!!!!! They never work and there is always the threat of turning them too much.

My next post will be about something so utterly feminine to balance out this plumbing theme just to keep everything right in the world for those that can't handle a woman working under the sink. Maybe I'll sew something like I did after the time I replaced my roof (in July) (in Phoenix)!!!!!!! Halloween IS coming up, and my bird of an eater just doesn't FIT into anything she wants to wear!

Oh, idea for next blog. Abby. Halloween. Date. Reminder to self.

OK, later.

Rude Awakening

Shortly after 4:00 this morning, I got a call from (follow along) my mother's husband's mother's boyfriend. For simplicity sake, I'll just call him my grandfather, and likewise with the rest.

So, Grandpa called to say he can't reach my mom (not that he can't reach my dad, the woman's son!) and he wanted to know if I could get in touch with them. Grandma is in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

I told him I'd try to reach them and asked what happened. I guess she's sick, but as far as I could tell, it's not related to her heart problem.

So, I say good bye and call my mom's phone. Dad answers immediately. (How hard was that?) Turns out in the time it took me to tell Marti what was going on, Dad had already talked to Grandpa.

So, there you have it. I was woken up at 4 AM today for no apparent reason.

It gets better.

At 5:40 AM, my MOM called me! Why? To ask me if I had spoken to my Grandfather. (!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?) She was in the car with my dad when she called me.

First of all, not to point out the obvious, but WHAT DID she and my dad talk about in the hour or more that it took them to get into the car together? Did this not already come up?

Second of all, so what if I did or did not talk to him yet. There is nothing I can do. Why wake me up (again, as it turns out) presumably just to tell me she's in the hospital?

I hate getting woken up. I hate getting woken up early in the morning. I hate getting woken up early in the morning TWICE. I hate getting woken up early in the morning TWICE, to get information about something I cannot do anything about anyway.

Happy Fucking Monday to me!

Woo Hoo! It's Working!

I've been pretty religiously entering my meals and exercise on The Daily Plate since I started it on 8/20/08. It's been a month, and while I have not exercised at least 3 times a week like I wanted to do, I have seen results!

I have lost 4.5 lbs so far, which isn't really off from the 1 pound per week that I thought I would lose. I did target 1.5 pounds per week, but every time I blow it for a day or don't exercise, I know that takes its toll on my results, and I'm ok with 1 pound per week I guess. :)

I have also lost an inch in my waist already, and that is where I want to lose it the most! My shorts are a little lose on me again and it feels GREAT!!! I want to go shopping for new work clothes because it's been a while and my clothes are all faded or have stains here and there. It's not a good idea though, because if this keeps up, I will shrink out of anything that I buy today and just have to go buy more. We try to be tight with the money, especially in times like we're seeing these days. No need to go out and waste hundreds of dollars on something I'll just have to replace in a month anyway, right? Lucky for me I got the job at the casual place and nobody cares. Had I gotten the job at the financial firm it would be a whole new story.

Instead of Thanksgiving for a goal, I have changed it to New Year's Eve because it's hard enough sticking to the 1 pound a week diet guidelines. I still try for the 1.5 goal, but I don't feel bad if I go over a couple hundred calories or take a break from exercising if I'm tired. Who knows, maybe I'll have to adjust again once the holidays hit. That can't be good for a diet, right? Maybe I'll give Marti his wife back on Valentine's Day. :)

For now, I just want to share that the help I get from the website is definitely working for ME! I need to see results, and the graphs that show every little half pound lost really make a difference for me. I like seeing the correlation between the calories I consume and my weight, as well. (There is a calorie overlay feature on the weight graph.)

The site does allow for some measurements to be entered on the free version, so I've done that twice now, but I also entered more measurement points on my body in an Excel sheet since I didn't want to pay for the added features on the site.

Even though I'm exhausted from all the plumbing I've been doing this week (and the all-nighter I pulled under the kitchen sink on Friday!) I still feel good knowing I'm on my way back to the body I want to have back.

I just hope that my skin doesn't sag once I deflate all this fat out of it! Please, skin, shrink back with the rest of it!!!!

Oh, and boobs... It was nice knowing you two! I am not even going to pretend to think that they are going to stick around!

Human Calendar

Do you like it? I just added it today. I think it's funny.

That Nagging Feeling…

Do you ever get that nagging feeling that you’re forgetting something, or that you should be doing something? I’m getting that right now. Have been, all day.

I have this feeling that I should be getting ready for something, but nothing is really happening. I guess Abby’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks, but Marti has that pretty much covered. I guess we need to order her a Nemo cake, but other than that, I don’t have much else to do for it.

We discussed a possible move to a bigger home (right next door!), but decided not to do that, as it’s not EXACTLY what we wanted and we’d always wish for something a little bit different. Did my mind not let go of that “get ready to move” thing? Am I having phantom “moving pains,” like the phantom pains people have in their arm after losing said arm? I don’t THINK that’s what it is, but I’ve been racking my brain to try to figure out what it could be coming from.

I guess I need to finish the kitchen project that I started (and the bathroom project), but the feeling is more like I need to be planning something, not completing something. I feel like I should be looking things up online and getting ready for something. This feeling is STRONG. But I have no idea what it’s tied to. Not really.

It’s a little unnerving.

I guess it’s like that nesting feeling most women get when they are pregnant. It’s consuming. I feel kind of like that, but we all know there is no baby to be had here. Am I going to become that crazy lady whose body starts having symptoms of a pregnancy so utterly wanted, yet nowhere to be found?

Agh!!!! WHAT is this feeling?????

Is That Vomit????

When I opened my kitchen cabinet to see all of my cleaning supplies, pipes, and interior cabinet walls spewed with God only knows what kind of wet, yellowish, curd-like substance, logic told my mind that it couldn't possibly be vomit UNDER THE SINK!!! But my eyes cannot be fully convinced -- still. Thankfully, my nose was able to back up my mind and make a pretty good effort in trying to convince my eyes that you cannot possibly have that amount of vomit without at least SOME gut wrenching odor, which thankfully, really was absent.

So, what was it, you ask?

It took me a while to figure it out.

I am of the school of thought that all storage in a small home must be fully utilized, so the space under the sink was PACKED! It took a bit of time and effort to get all the curd coated stuff out of there. Of course, there were pools of water here and there, and the reverse osmosis tank to be dealt with as well. (This tank is probably 3 gallons, and now sits approximately an inch lower than anything else in the cabinet due to its weight pushing down into the soggy particle board that is my cabinet base.)

When I finally got everything out and Marti helped me sop up all the muck, I realized there were egg shells the size of lady bugs mixed in with all the slop.

HUH??? Where did THEY come from?

Upon closer inspection, I realized our garbage disposal had a blow out and had been spewing semi-rotted, completely wet garbage into and over all of my under-sink belongings for at least a few days until I discovered it.

Lovely. I still haven't finished redoing the OTHER repair I made to our downstairs toilet a couple weekends ago!

Tonight I went to the home store to get a new disposal, as well as a new faucet while I was at it. What the heck, right? Our old faucet has been limping along for months now, and dealing with one part here, one part there through Delta's lifetime warranty program is getting a bit tedious. There comes a point when you just have to say, "Fuck it!" and buy a new one. (Or, would that be "Pfuck it" since the new on is a Price Pfister faucet? LOL!!!)

So I did.

I selected a basic pull-out faucet to replace the one we have. It was about $100. On the way out, I saw another one on a clearance end cap that WAS about $100, but was marked down to $25 or so. It was entirely different than the one we currently have, but I figured for the price, maybe it would be JUST FINE!

Then I went to pay for it.

They guy tried scanning it, and was laughing each time. It could only mean one thing. Someone was called to assist, and when the advice that was given was followed and the other person came over to assist, I ended up getting a $100 faucet for a PENNY! :)

He did inform me that if I decided I wanted to return it, I would only get my penny back. Um, well, if that's all I paid for it, then why would I have a problem with that? It was almost like, "Here, TAKE this. If it doesn't work out, just toss it or give it to a friend."

A penny.

Seriously!

Now all I need to know is how does one take a cabinet apart to replace a MAJORLY sagging/warped base inside without ruining the face?

And He Says I'm Not Funny!!!!

I tend to be a prankster. Since it’s just the three of us in the house, and 2-year-olds don’t generally respond well to my type of pranks, Marti tends to be the victim of my pranks more often than not.

A little semi-irrelevant history: last week (?) a 2 year old got loose on the streets of the valley by unlocking the front door and wandering off while his grandparents slept. I’ve had 2 separate people that I KNOW tell me that something very similar has happened to them – so it truly can happen to anyone. Those toddlers are crafty and capable of so much more than we give them credit for sometimes!

I ran upstairs to go to the restroom (our downstairs toilet is currently out of service) and thought to myself, “What if she wandered off while I was up here doing my business? I could happen, right?” I then remembered that I had some rinky-dink little door alarms that I had bought over a year ago to put on some of the doors so I’d know if she was up wandering into rooms she shouldn’t be in at night. They didn’t fit the bedroom doors, so they just sat in a box in the garage – until now. I took them out to see what I’d need to do to rig them up to the doors because I have a new motivation to do so with all these toddlers escaping!

Back to the prank…

Marti was outside BBQing last night, so I stuck one on the SLIDING door (which took no rigging up), turned it on, and then watched and waited….

I had to watch to make sure he was coming in with nothing in his hands. It has an ear-piercing 90 decibel alarm and he would NOT be expecting it.

So, I waited. And waited… It didn’t take long until he came towards the door, and, as luck would have it, I didn’t need to stop him, as his hands were empty.

I don’t know what I was thinking!!!! I didn’t get the camera out and have it running, but I should have! Dang it! He jumped – well, actually crouched down – and looked up at it like it was a swarm of bees about to attack! I laughed so hard, and once he caught his breath, he admitted it was funny.

He tells me all the time that I’m not funny, but this week he told me on three separate occasions that I was funny. Last night after that, he stopped to think and said something to the effect of, “You know what? I think you ARE funny after all!”

We’ve been together ten years, and he’s finally seeing this?

;)

As for me, I can’t wipe this shit-eating grin off my face every time I picture him doing his little “duck and cover” move when that alarm went off. I did get one heck of a belly laugh out of that last night!

Random Act of Kindness

I wouldn’t say the diet is going WELL yet, but I am not saying it’s a failure, either. I’m learning about the foods I eat, simply by paying better attention to what I eat and what is actually IN it. So, it’s a learning process, and I still am very encouraged that this will work well EVENTUALLY.

So, anyway, we have vending machines at work and I wanted something sweet today. I decided on a Diet Mountain Dew. Until last week, I didn’t even REALIZE we HAVE Diet Mountain Dew in the machine!

What happened was, the guy who comes and fills all of our machines was there, and it occurred to me to ask him if one of the 5 rows of bottled and canned Mountain Dew could be traded out for Diet Mountain Dew. It was then that he directed me 2 rows up to what he dubbed “The Oddball Row” where there WAS a nice pretty line of Diet Mountain Dew bottles! It was there all along!

I laughed and told him I was so fixated on the consolidated corner of regular Mountain Dews that I didn’t even think to look elsewhere for it. (It was up with all the funky juices and teas that I would never choose.)

He smiled, took out a Diet Mountain Dew, and handed it to me, saying, “Here you go – for holding out so long.” Aw, shucks! Thanks, buddy!

So now, every time I go back the machine, I get an “Aw, shucks” moment again! You see, the price on that row says $1.25, but every time I put my 5 quarters in there and press C5, it then displays $1.00 on the payment screen and gives me a quarter back.

It’s like a little coupon or rebate every time I buy one!

Would it be silly of me to think that he reset that price that day after we spoke? I wonder when he comes back and sees the Diet Mountain Dew row fairly well depleted, if he’ll smile that little smile we all get when we know we’ve done one of those random acts of kindness.

WHY????

Some people just don't think about what they are doing and inadvertently make others angry, while some make a point to go out of their way to piss people off.



I've got absolutely nothing against Hummers or people that drive them. That is not the point of this post. My point is that he is purposely riling people up about a MAJOR drawback to that type of vehicle. In my book, that makes him a classic:



And, while I'm at it, this came up in the related videos of that one and it makes me laugh!



Abby also does not exactly say TRUCK, and it makes me laugh every time she doesn't exactly say truck. I, however, would never set her up to say "bad things" and post it on youtube. Ever. Nope, never. ;)

OK, so she did say BIG GIANT BALLS, but that was different, right? She really DID say big giant balls. And I didn't set her up. I just knew it was going to happen. (That other little kid is still funny!)

Childlike vs. Childish

Childlike would be, say, having the freedom to make a comment as soon as it comes to mind with no concern for what it may make others think -- that is, if you even had a clue that it COULD make others think something other than what you were trying to say.

Childish would be me, getting the camera ready, knowing full well that the last 3 times we've driven by Chase Field on our way home from the arena that Abby has made the same comments, and would be very likely to do so again. (Sorry it's so dark. It was taken with a regular camera, in the car, at night.)



In case you are not familiar with Chase Field, there ARE some BIG GIANT BALLS out in front of the stadium. For some reason, they catch Abby's eye every time we drive by, and every time she makes some exclamation with the same childlike enthusiasm.

Out of Africa

We went to Out of Africa Wildlife Park Labor Day weekend to see the tigers and other wild animals. It's about an hour north of Phoenix, so it wasn't too bad of a drive. It was supposed to be close to 100 degrees and 60% chance of rain, but we took a chance anyway. Turned out it was a good bet!

It wasn't hot because of the impending storm. We had an overcast day most of the day, and cool breezes all day long. It was great! Very close to the end of our day we decided to walk down the trail to see the bears and other animals, but, the rain came in and we just about got soaked! We made a quick U-turn and headed back for the tram stop and waited the storm out with about 50 other people, huddled just out of reach of the rain.



ALL the trams showed up at once, but they were FULL of people! It was feeding time for all the animals, and people were on that tour. There were no trams to be had for QUITE a while. The rain finally let up a little, so we made a break for it and started heading down the hill.

In the course of the day, Abby got to pet 3 HUGE snakes and a tortoise.





She also got to feed a real live tiger!!! (And Abby will tell you she did it two times: "one time up high, and one time down low.")





Admission was a little high ($32.00 each), but they do have a lot of meat eaters to feed, so I can see why they have to charge a high price to get in. (We had a 2-for-1 coupon, though, and Abby was still free!) Feeding the tiger was only $3.00, so we will definitely do that again!

While in line for the tiger feeding, I overheard the woman behind me saying something about having eaten her breakfast and normally she has something in her purse. I picked up on it right away, and asked her if she had low blood sugar. (How many times have I felt that same woozie feeling even though I ate earlier? How awful it must have felt for her to try to make the choice to stand in line for the kids to feed the tiger, knowing she could eventually pass out and ruin the entire day! How bad would she have felt knowing she forgot to pack herself a snack that day?) I couldn't help but butt in and ask her to confirm what I thought. Of course, I was right, so I offered her a pack of Abby's fruit snacks and some almonds. She was a happy camper! (Rack up some karma points for Lisa!)

Also, at the last second before leaving, I had packed some garbage bags in case we got stranded in the rain in the park so we could rig some ponchos. Turned out we didn't need them. However, there was a woman with a new cast trying to cover it with a tiny grocery bag. It was not even coming close to what she needed. Lisa to the rescue again!

It felt good to be able to help some people out, to enjoy the weather we did get, and even when were were stuck under the little ramada at the tram stop, there was a huge tiger pacing just across the road (waiting for his supper, just a few yards down the road) for us to enjoy while we waited.



I had memories of feeding a bear when I was Abby's age, and hoped to get pictures of Abby feeding a giraffe from her own mouth, as I did with the bear as a tot. Alas, the giraffe was not hungry that day, so we'll have to try again another time. (They give everyone a long carrot stick and said you can even stick your head out of the bus with the carrot in your mouth and get a giraffe kiss [blech! but how cool!] if you wanted to.)




All in all, it was a great day! Marti really did make this weekend great by coming up with that idea! A good time was had by all. I'll post the link to some you tube video of the tigers jumping HIGH in the air as soon as I get a chance in the next week or so. Right now I have to get to my projects that have been hanging over my head for a while. I love long weekend! I get to relax one day, go have tons of fun another day, and still have another day to do my projects. I am complete on long weekends! :)