friday fragments

it’s been so long since i did one of these i hope i remember how

******conversation with the g-kid:

• me: i’m all full of milk but i want some coffee, james. what should i do??

• james: umm, go pee?

******conversation with the hubby regarding new pet:

• me: should i spell chewy’s name c-h-e-w-y or c-h-e-w-i-e ? (it’s short for chewbacca)
• hubby: g-o-n-e

******speaking of new pet, here is a pic of my new baby. chewy was originally my step-daughter’s dog, but she is working 16 hr shifts twice a week, and the poor thing was miserable while she was working. also, he didn’t really like the g-kid and she was worried he might bite him. nonna to the rescue!! the most shocking thing is that hubby (who was adamantly against an indoor dog) is letting him sleep with us!

******conversation with the g-kid after seeing a squished fox on the road:

• james: what do foxes eat?
• me: mice, squirrels, rabbits…small animals like that
• james: ewww i wouldn’t want to eat a rabbit (i guess mice and squirrels are ok??)
• me: i’ve ate a rabbit before
• james: really?!? what did it taste like?
• me: chicken (hehe) maybe i should try to find a store that sells rabbit so i can try to cook one.
• james: i know the perfect store to find a rabbit.
• me: (incredulously) really?? where?
• james: well, my me-me took me there once and i want to go back there again. i bet we could find a rabbit there. it’s called ….Toys-R-Us! (had to give him an A for effort on that one)

******we are actually doing good in darts! we are in first place (which shocked us) and i’m in first place for the ton run even with missing a week for my surgery!

******i think i must be the only person alive who can actually injure herself sitting on the couch. i have no idea what i did to it, but i got up to go to bed last night and could barely walk on my left ankle. usually, when i have some strange pain like this it goes away overnight, but alas, i am still hobbling around today. who’da thunk it??

******i have my final hearing for SS Disability set for Nov. 10th. hopefully the judge will agree with me on the issue of the SS dr.’s ridiculous report. did you know that i am able to lift AND carry ONE HUNDRED pounds for eight hours a day??? hopefully the judge will realize that the dr. was full of shit and the less than 10 min. assessment she performed was waaaaay out of line.

******i’m sure that there have been 50 million other things to frag about, but i can’t remember any more of them. now that fall is here and the weather is yucky, hopefully i will start blogging again. course i said that after my surgery and totally lied between babysitting (way more than usual lately), reading, knitting (oh yah! i taught myself to knit! lol), watching tv & movies, and taking walks with the dogs i just cant seem to make myself sit down at the puter anymore. i’ve missed yall (even though it doesn’t show by my lack of reading/commenting) and hope to get back into the swing of things soon… some day…. ah, hell. i have no idea if i will or not you’ll just have to cross your fingers and hope i do.

finally feeling fine (mostly) friday

here it goes:

had surgery on monday the 31st. i did in fact stay up all night, rather than sleep a little and get up at 3:30am (btw: NOT recomended). the surgery went great. the recovery room sucked, because they talked me out of doing the epidural if they only did the laparoscopic surgery. i was in more pain and stayed in there longer, than this poor woman who had a double mastectomy! i have decided that between the fibromyalgia (which increases your nerve receptors or some such) and the EDS (which makes my muscles have to work a lot more than they should), i just don’t respond normally to what should have been an “easy surgery”.

so, after several shots of different pain meds, they finally got enough drugs in me to inform me that i would be going home that day.  they sent me to another holding room. now, A) i wanted to stay overnight because i know how much pain i would be in and it’s much easier to just push that morphine button than trying to ride home 2 hours away and popping pills all night. B)holding room = gurney. which SUCKS! i wanted a bed so bad! after laying on the gurney for upteen hours before, during, and after the surgery my back and hips were killing me. C) i hate the whole send you home before you know for sure that your wounds are going to heal correctly, etc..

well, i guess they have figured out how to get someone like me to leave. they wouldn’t let me take a wheelchair and go outside to smoke. it was going on about 11 hrs without a smoke and i was dying for one. they said that i could go have a smoke if i am leaving, so all of a sudden i was really ready to leave! lol the ride home was not fun. my last dose of pain meds had started wearing off and we had to go over to the V.A. to get my ’scripts filled. THANK GOODNESS the v.a. nurse took pity on me and just gave my scripts to the doc so i didn’t have to wait through the whole ER process. i took my nausea med, waited a while and took a pain pill. we got about 1 or 2 miles from the hospital and  i threw up (good thing i took my puke tub with me when i checked out). that brought on a kind of mild panic attack cuz i was afraid of what it would do to my stomach and cuz my arms and legs were tingling like when you hyper ventilate. i started breathing in a paper bag, but it didn’t stop so i freaked and tried calling my mom (she was a nurse). she didn’t answer so i called her twin (aunt faye who was also a nurse) and she talked me down from my panic attack.

alright. we get home finally and i can’t go to sleep! i’ve been up since 11am on sunday and it was 11pm on monday before i could get to sleep. i don’t know why. i was exhausted, my eyes hurt like hell from something they put in them (i swear it was sand) during the surgery. i finally get to sleep, wake up every 4 hours or so for meds, and then get up around 8am on tuesday. i was sooo freaking restless tuesday that i hardly never sat still. i don’t know what was wrong with me (again) but it seemed like it i was only comfortable if i was walking instead of sitting. i decided to take a shower and wash my hair thinking that might calm me down some.

…yadda, yadda, yadda…(don’t really remember much of tuesday eve/night except taking pills earlier and earlier)

wednesday morning i’m up early even though i wanted to sleep in. i’m taking my pain pills every 3 hours now (which i found out accidentally was the correct dosage. i had assumed they were every 4-6 hrs like most pain pills and i had been trying to stretch it to 5 hours! lol) and the pain is not going down at all. i decided i needed to write down when and what i was taking, because i was afraid that i was taking so much that i would forget and take too much. the pain was increasing and it should not have been that bad at that point. i tried doubling my pain pills. no effect to the pain. went to the bathroom and noticed that the inside of my shirt had something on it. my incision was oozing something that didn’t look very good. ok, call the v.a. clinic in my town. they don’t want to touch me. they want me to call the surgeon. i call her office. her nurse starts to tell me that i can come in the next day and they can check it. i told her that there was no way i could drive 2 hrs  feeling the way i did, nor could i wait another day in this pain. i read off the meds i had taken since last night and didn’t even get through half of them when she told me to go to my local ER.

off to River Park (hospital that kills people, that you only go to if you’re dying so they can stabilize you and send you to a real hospital) we go. they check me in and the nurse looks at my incision. first thing she says is “oh, yeah. that’s not right”. it’s amazing how many conflicting emotions you can have at the same time. relief-cuz i know there’s actually something wrong and i’m not just being a cry baby. anger-cuz they should have let me stay in the hospital long enough to make sure this wouldn’t happen. scared-because there is now something ELSE wrong with me and all i can think of is staph infections and flesh-eating bacteria lol

they gave me an i.v., gave me some morphine which totally didn’t work. it seemed like it made all of my minor pains from the 3 other small incisions go away which amplified the infected one to 10x worse pain. don’t ask me how. i just know it did. so i begged for something else and they gave me a shot of toradol. that stuff is my new best friend. after only about 5 minutes or so i was feeling much better. then they took x-rays. i guess to make sure they didn’t leave something inside of me they didn’t see anything abnormal, but they informed me my bowels were quite full. NO SHIT (pun intended) i was backed up 4 days before the surgery and after all the pain meds i was stillll backed up. half the time i didn’t know if it was my surgery or just my stomach hurting.

friday off we (poor hubby/chauffeur & me) go back to nashville to be seen by yet another dr. that i haven’t ever met. my surgeon is on vacation this week. so he looks at my nasty oozing wound and tells me he is more concerned with the not going poop for 9 long-painful-days. he pokes around on my stomach and says that he doesn’t feel any abscesses or such. tells me to violate myself with an enema and sends me on my way.

get home. violate myself. NOTHING HAPPENS!! also, as i’m changing my bandage i happen to push down on this very hard area right above the incision. now, i mentioned this area to the dr. earlier, but he said it was fine. well, low and behold, when you press that area, more stuff comes out!! hmmm, to me that seems like one of those abscesses he was checking to make sure i didn’t have. at this point i just give up. i tell hubby that i don’t give a crap any more i can either rot away from the inside or blow up. i’m not going to another dr. about this crap. i’m not trying to call another dr. that’s it! i’m done.

saturday comes and i was just going to lay in bed all day and wallow in my self-pity. nope. my tummy starts cramping. off to the “loo” i go. yeah! splash down lol. things started getting better after that. i think my incision is pretty much healed up. just a little bit of oozing going on. hard place is getting smaller (still there a little bit, which worries me some, but i’m ignoring that voice). oh! and i think i have thrush from the antibiotics. never had it before. never want it again. just about everything i eat hurts! oh and smoking? FORGET IT! it burns like a, a, something that burns really bad. lol i totally lost a good comparison.

to make long story just a little bit longer…hopefully from now on i will only be blogging about funny, happy things and can leave my pathetic, pitiful, health crap off of here. i can always torture my family with that

taking the cake…tuesday

my ongoing, getting quite ridiculous, journey to get this stupid cyst removed:i guess i should update y’all very briefly about this saga:

• murfreesboro VA sent me to nashville VA because they couldn’t actually see any ovarian tissue so they can’t do the surgery in murfreesboro due to the lack of a general surgeon if the ovarian cyst turns out to be something else.

• nashville VA surgeon wants a gyn/oncology surgeon AND a general surgeon, AND a bowel surgeon there just to cover all the bases.

• nashville VA doesn’t have all of these types of surgeons so they send me to vanderbilt gyn/oncologist.

• then original vandy surgeon drops me and hands me off to somebody else. now, i have my gyn/cancer surgeon (like THAT’S not enough to scare the crap out of ya) and now i have a bowel surgeon that keeps saying the words tumor and colon re-section and colostomy bag (more scary crap).

• finally get a surgery set for august 18th, 1pm. so here is how that went:

are you ready for this one? i’m lying at Vanderbilt hospital, i.v. in place, totally cool err warm hospital gown (with built in heater) on, waiting to speak to the anesthesiologist and the surgeon…

…in comes the nurse. surgery is running quite a bit behind. might be a couple hours late to get started. my response: ok, can i go smoke a cigarette?? she goes and checks…nope no cigarette allowed but just hang in there. ok, back to waiting game…

….in comes the surgery student chick. somebody’s surgery has changed from laparoscopic to full blown open abdominal surgery (just like what my surgery might be). surgery resident(?) says the dreaded words: “i’m so sorry to tell you this, but you’re surgery has been canceled.”

1st thought: oh, crap i gotta take the bowel prep stuff all over again. nope, surgery chick says the dr. isn’t gonna make me do the bowel prep again.

2nd thought: how long am i gonna have to wait for a new date??

3rdthought: doesn’t anybody else see the danger of continually delaying this surgery??!!! the longer the cyst/mass/tumor (take your pick) is in me, the more it grows, the more chance there is that it will attach to my colon or bladder!  ok, so i resign myself to the fact that i can’t talk the nice surgery chick into bumping the other person before me and send them home…

…in comes a nurse to remove my i.v. she tries to offer some stupid platitudes that i guess are supposed to magically make me happy and not be upset that i was this<–>close to having this damn thing removed. well, it didn’t work. then the bowel prep comment sinks in. i look at my mom and say “how the heck can i NOT do the bowel prep next time?? if i needed it now, i’ll need it just as much if not more the next time! i think the dr. is just trying to make me feel better today and then she’ll change her mind later.” then i said something about how i guess i was wrong thinking that having my surgery at vandy would go smoother than thru the V.A.

remember that nurse that was removing my i.v.? well, she decides it’s her place to jump into MY conversation with my MOM and tell me how she doesn’t appreciate me taking my anger out on her. what?! excuse the holy-f’ing-shit out of me!! you want to see anger, lady, well you just pushed the wrong button! how dare she! i can air my grievances to my mom any flipping time i like! i don’t remember what i said to her since i went from zero to redneck in about 1/2 a second but the conversation ended with me telling her to get out of my room and me slamming the door in her face. i’m still in shock over her gall to try to reprimand me for being upset, when they just made me, my husband, & my mom drive over 2 hours, sit and wait for another 3 hours for nothing! to say nothing of the fact that i was hungry, thirsty, got up early, AND had no coffee. stupid wench. she’s lucky i didn’t take that i.v. and poke her eye out with it!

so, now i am rescheduled for 8/31 at 7 freaking 30 in the a.m. which means i have to be there at 5:30 a.m., which means i will have to leave at 3-oh, my lord, i might as well stay up all night-30 in the a.m. OR fork out money for a hotel room in nashville the night b4. oh, and now i will totally miss the g-kids b-day party which is gonna be on the 5th at an indoor bounce/slide type place where the adults are allowed to play too! double bummer! ok, i guess i’ve vented enough. maybe i’ve gotten it out of my system.

soggy camping sunday – 100th post!!!

several of these comments were actually heard around our campsite in NOT-so-sunny Florida last month:

No, our tents did not pass the leak test.

Yes, the campfire was kaput after the first night.

No, we didn’t have harmless flies.

Yes, we had lovely, hungry, blood-thirsty mosquitoes.

Yes, the old man was snoring (and seashore said cheeseburger’s snoring had quieted some – if that’s true, i think she is a saint, cuz i woulda murdered his noisy butt in his sleep a lonnnng time ago!)

No, we didn’t get to go fishing outside the tent.

Yes, the raccoons went fishing in my cooler!

No, we didn’t give in to nature.

Yes, we went tubing. in the rain. in the coooold water.

Yes, we turned blue.

No, we didn’t see any gators (thank goodness!)

Yes, we saw river otters, turtles, and many many fish.

No, the rain didn’t stop. ever.

Yes, we took over the pavilion and had a blast playing Aggravation.

No, i didn’t win (probably because i had no minions to influence and brainwash).

Yes, they talked me into driving farther south to leave behind the rain.

No, i didn’t want to have farther to drive back home

Yes, i’m glad they talked me into it, because i actually got to experience some hot, sunny FL weather.

Yes, seashore’s AC decided to conk out during the hot, sunny FL weather.

Yes, believe it or not, i had a great time and plan to do it again. hopefully, without the rain.

No, i’m not posting pictures at this time.

Yes, i’m lazy like that, so there!

YES, THIS WAS MY 100TH POST!!

something….saturday

yes, i should be posting about the camping trip..go read seashore’s version and hush

yes, i should be posting about my bone-marrow biopsy (that got cancelled cuz of poison ivy breakout and resulting shot – woohoo!)

yes, i should be posting about my surgery to remove my “tumor” (it’s a freakin’ ovarian cyst! stop saying tumor you stupid dr.s!)

yes, i should be posting about my beautiful, bountiful garden…got the pics, i’ll get to it later than sooner

so, you must be asking yourself what has got me excited enough to break my silence and sit down and post, right? well…..it’s WORMS!!!

no, not the “uh oh, fido’s scooting across the rug on his butt” kind of worms…CATALPA WORMS! these are the BEST catfish bait known to man (well at least known to this WOman). i bought a couple of catalpa trees from the nursery where i used to work hoping that i would have the right sphinx moth among my many, many, way too freakin’ many moths around my house. the sphinx month lays the eggs for the catalpa worms. i’ve got them!! here is a pic of the tree (it looks a little rough because it got a little wind burned on the way home)

the brown leaves on the bottom are from the worms eating their first meals. they will hatch in early spring and late summer and pretty much strip the tree of leaves. that’s fine with me though, cuz it won’t kill the tree. you can take the worms and pack them in either sawdust or cornmeal and freeze them. then you just thaw them out (and supposedly they come back to life) when you’re ready to go fishing. here is what my little babies look like now:

aren’t they just adorable?? i have about 2 or 3 more leaves with this many on them and i swear i think they have doubled in size from just yesterday! my other tree didn’t have any on it yet, so i took a few off of this tree and transplanted them to the other. this is what they will look like once they are full size and ready to be bait:

here is a little blurb about how to fish with these juicy worms:

“There are several ways to use this worm as bait. It can be cut in half, turned inside out and threaded on the hook. Another way is to cut them in pieces just like an earthworm. But the most common way seems to be cut (or bite-YUK!!!) its head off, use the end of a match and turn its body inside out. The common thread here is to release its aromatic scent and green fluorescent juices.”

if you’re interested you can read the rest of that article here.

oh, and i am soooo not gonna be biting off the heads. that is just WRONG. i will however pinch off the heads and turn them inside out as i’m putting them on the hook.

and yes, mother, i will hook your worms for you.

well, that’s all for now. my surgery is tuesday and i’m hoping to talk step-daughter into letting me borrow her laptop for a little while so i can post all of those things i’ve been too lazy to do. hopefully, i will get to catch up on a bunch of blog reading too!

gone fishin’

and swimmin’, and tubin’, and campin’, and whatever else i can get into with seashore and company…

miss me? i’ll try to tweet my trip if i can figure out my new LG ENVY TOUCH!! oh, i’m nonnasnonsense on twitter too

update:

ok, so i couldn’t figure out how to get on twitter. well, acutally, my phone just wouldn’t bring up twitter or wordpress’ sites. go figure! thanks for all the “have funs” and “tweet comments” i will be posting a blog of our adventures soon. i’m sure seashore subjects will do it sooner than me, since i’m a better procrastinator than she is

show and tell saturday

well a lot more showing than telling here is my vege garden. it’s doing great this year!

notice the boards to the left. hopefully that will stop the rain from flooding through the middle of my garden and washing away my hard work! the garden is downhill from our barn which has a LOT of water shed off of it in a hard rain. you might think, hmmm why do you keep planting it there then? well, not only does it shed a lot of water, but the barn also sends wonderful nutrients to the garden thanks to it’s previous occupants…cows! lol no need to fertilize in other words

 

 

the sweet potatos just got planted recently. kind of a spur of the moment thing since i had this sweet potato in the kitchen trying to grow trees on it the okra didn’t come up the first go round. i think we had too much rain right after i planted them the 1st time. these were just planted a few weeks ago, so they are pretty small still. oh, and back on the left in the background are my cucumbers with cages around them so hopefully they will grow up instead of out. the bags on top of the cages are my “poor man’s scarecrow”

i’ve always thought it was weird that people around here plant flowers in their vege gardens, but i guess i’ve turned into a true country person i planted sunflowers for my sis who loves them and some snap dragons for me.

wednesday woes

hi everybody! yes, it’s actually me and i’m actually posting something. i know, i know, don’t die from the shock. besides the 50 million other excuses i could give for not posting, i have been kinda waiting for my social security hearing (monday) and my surgery consultation (tuesday) to pass so i could update everybody about them. because, let’s face it, there isn’t much else going on in my life right now to talk about other than my health (or lack there of). so, that being said….here is my update:

i still don’t know shit! my hearing went well enough, but the judge decided that since all of my medical care has been through the VA (heaven forbid he trust the GOVERNMENT provided doctors’ opinions) he wants me to go to a doctor of his choice. oh, and a shrink of his choice too. he admitted that he didn’t know anything about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and would have to research that and then see what these other dr.s report. my lawyer actually seemed a little more positive after the hearing which is an improvement.

oh, wait. y’all don’t know about that new diagnosis do you?? man, i’m such a slacker. ok, so back in mid-may i went to the rheumatologist at the nashville VA. after listening to my symptoms and my theories (what?? a dr. actually LISTENED to his patient?!!? wtF?) and after he checked several things he came up with a diagnosis. AND it wasn’t “quit smoking and you’ll miraculously be cured” like his fellow rheumatologist told me a few years ago. i have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS from now on, cuz, you guessed it, i’m lazy like that EDS is a genetic disorder that effects my tendons and ligaments so they don’t support my joints which means my muscles have to go into overdrive and stay tensed all the time to compensate. hmmm, sounds a lot like what i’ve been trying to tell my primary care dr. for the last 5+ years. go figure. oh, here is a great website if you’re interested in reading more about EDS. i don’t/won’t know for sure which type i have because you need genetic testing for that and the VA is too cheap to spring for that. the dr. thinks i have type I, II, or III and he is leaning towards III. i’m a little worried that i might have the vascular type which is (of course) the most dangerous and has an expected lifespan of around 48 y/o. i have several of the symptoms of this one, but not any of the major criteria. so, unless i actually get approved for disability and can get medicare/medicaid (whatever) to pay for genetic testing i guess i will never know for sure which type i have. c’est la vie.

on to the surgery clinic yesterday…after waiting for TWO and a half HOURS to be seen, they finally call me in. i go over all the ultrasound and mri findings with the little student-wanna-be-dr. then the real dr. comes in and i get to listen to the student repeat everything to him. then I get to repeat everything to him. *sigh* it would be sooo nice to be able to walk into the dr.’s office and have HIM read my freaking file. you know like maybe during the 2 1/2 freaking hour wait. it gets really old having to repeat this stuff over and over again. anyways, enough ranting about that cuz there are way more fun things to rant about coming up.

so this dr. decides that my ovarian cyst is not an ovarian cyst but some type of mass/tumor/they have no idea what that is associated more with my colon (that’s your poop chute for those not in the know than my ovary. now, he wants me to make an appt to talk to this dr. growl (i swear that’s what he called her!) who i believe is an oncologist type surgeon or something. i decided that enough was enough. this would have meant another wait for another appt and then still another wait for a surgery to be scheduled. i, as nicely as my frayed nerves would allow, explained that i have put my life on hold ( ie: no sex, no horseback riding, no anything strenuous, for the last 4 MONTHS) and i was done with this. my ca125 test was negative, which means in all likelihood, whatever this cyst/mass/tumor/B.S is, it’s not cancerous, so just freaking schedule an appointment and take it out already!! he decided that maybe he could page this dr. growl and see if she was available to come talk to me. AMAZING!! you mean that was an option?? then why didn’t you just do that instead of making me beg/plead/demand it??

dr. grau (ok, damnit i guess he wasn’t calling her growl) comes in and we get to go through the whole spiel again. *double sigh* she decides that she would really like to have a look at my colon. oh joy! at least she is nice and says she can use the flexible scope instead of the rigid one, because the rigid one is, well, rigid and it hurts…more. i informed her at this point i didn’t really care what she stuck up where, but i refuse to even try to drink that nasty salt water tasting stuff to “clear a path” for her flexible-so not quite as painful as the rigid-scope. she says she thinks an enema will do the job. double joy.

now, as i once again explain that i’m gonna go postal and kill somebody if they don’t get this done with soon so i can have some sex again (yeah, i said that. you try going this long and not seeing an end in sight. i’m still looking at 4-6 weeks recovery time after the stupid surgery ya know.) she tells me that just in case it is ovarian cancer that she would really like to have a gynecologist there during the surgery too. she makes some calls. are you ready for this one? murfreesboro VA only does gyn type open surgeries so there is no general surgeon there on stand-by. this is why i’m at the nashville VA in the first place. well, it seems that the nashville VA has general surgeons with NO gyn’s! she makes more calls. there are NO gyn’s with privileges to operate there. now why my gyn in murf. can’t come to nash. and be there during the surgery i don’t know. OH, and she also wants an oncologist there too. so now, i guess i’m gonna have to wait until the VA agrees to ship me out on fee basis to a regular hospital AND find a gyn, general surgeon, and an oncologist to all be there at the same time. i guess i might have surgery by oh, maybe the end of the year….if i’m lucky. 

on other news fronts: i caught a humongous snapper turtle while fishing for catfish in the in-law’s pond and then i almost caught a huuuugggge catfish. well, if a) we had remembered to put the net in the boat and b) it didn’t take hubby so long to snap a pic that the hook ripped outta the lip of the catfish, i would have landed that sucker! it was funny, i got it up to the boat and was trying to lift it up out of the water and it was so heavy i could only get it’s head up. i looked down into this giant, gaping, maw and said “what the heck do i do with that??” it’s mouth was so big i could have easily stuck my arm down in there and never touched the sides of it. next time, i’ll have my net ready and instruct hubby to video it on his cell here’s my snapper pic and i must say, it was much bigger than this pic looks! i would say the shell was at least a good foot across:

the g-kid is doing good, although he’s figuring out how to lie to try to avoid trouble. he really sucks at it though lol. he’ll sit there and think and umm, and wellll, and screw his face up like he’s trying to remember something lol. total give-a-way. oh, and he has started making up for missing out on the terrible two temper tamtrums that he skipped at that age. homey (nonna) don’t play that though. he starts the whining, crying stuff and i just ship him off to his room. i’m such a hard ass his mom has started threatening him with “i’m gonna call nonna and tell her how ugly you’re acting”. hey, if it works, i’ll play the mean cop. better than having a spoiled brat for a g-kid in my book. oh, and he went fishing the other day with his mom and her bf. he caught a nice sized blue gill and was holding it up for his mom to take a pic until it started thrashing around. he went from smiles to this, appropriately named “fish fright” lol:

for you mom – happy mother’s day

 

friday fragments

• my cell rang & it had jamie’s pic so i assumed it was her and answered in my typical yeeeesss (cuz ya never know what she’s about to tell/ask you) and i heard “hi nonna!” it was so cute! he told me what he was watching (backyardigans) and what he was eating (bread, ham, & yellow cheese which was actually ham & cheese biscuits) and then he said, “hang-on” he came back on and said, “somebody wants to talk to you” and he handed the phone back to his mom. she said that he said he wanted to call me so she told him the #’s to punch and he did it all by himself. how sweet  

• oh, i thought i would show off my irises just one. more. time:

• the next time i’ll be showing off that beautiful clematis vine that’s growing behind the irises. it’s already got a few blooms opened on it

• i am enjoying my census work so far except for the fact that the people i’m following behind and checking are being lazy so their stuff isn’t passing QA inspection. which means that lucky me gets to re-canvas the whole area. so instead of just checking about 10% of the houses in an area, i’m having to check 100% of them. oh joy!

• ok, mom is dying to hear about interesting people that i meet while doing the census work. so far, there hasn’t been a lot of meeting people period, but i did talk to this man and his mom for a little while the other day. there was a trailer and what looked like could definitely be a separate living quarter on the property. nobody was answering at the trailer so i moseyed on down to the other building. i knocked on the door and an older lady with a shower cap on her head answered. i was trying to see around her to figure out if she was living there while i explained who i was. turns out she was making beef jerky! yummy! so i said “ummmm do you sell the beef jerky here? cuz if you do i’d like to buy some.”  so she hollered (literally) to her son across the road to come find me some jerky. he came over and we got to talking and, of course, who my husband is came up (cuz in the south everybody knows every body’s husband-us women are just decoration doncha know). well, it turns out that my hubby and his dad sold a john deere tractor to this guy when they owned the dealership and he still has it! oh, and he threw me in an extra bag of jerky too!

• ok, since i guess i just really don’t know how to type short freaking fragments, i will leave you with this totally cool video i shot the other day. this is a battle of evil -vs- evil, winged stingers -vs- web slingers, umm, umm, ok, i can’t think of anymore of those but here is a fight to the death between a wasp and a black widow spider, right outside MY HOUSE!!