Retail Therapy

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We.are.going.shopping!

Ollie's Big Adventure

Last night was fun.

Not.

I was getting the house put to bed, you know, locking up and turning out lights when there was a crash in the kitchen. One of those "oh crap, something's just broken into a million little pieces and it's probably your favorite ugly lime-green coffee cup" crashes.

The crash was followed by our youngest cat, Ollie, streaking through the house like his tail was on fire. He'd somehow jettisoned a full sugar bowl across the counter. Kaboom.

Sigh. Out with the vaccuum cleaner.

Suck up contents of ex-sugar bowl. Put away vaccuum. Go find Ollie.

Locate Ollie. Ollie has a m.o.u.s.e. He is very possessive of his little toys friends. We have five yes five cats. No self-respecting mouse should even consider stepping their nasty little ugly scary feet in this house.

We had a minor population explosion of mousies last winter. Even one-eyed Luna and fat cat Rosie managed to bag themselves a mouse and act all hunter-ish and proud of themselves. Earned their keep, they did. More than decorative, they were. Grrr. Mighty hunters.

Last winter, Ollie's first two mice were dispatched without a lot of fuss on his part. Find 'em, kill, 'em, get mad when we'd Mr. Sweetie would take it away and throw it in the garbage. Outside. As far away as possible from me. I'm far too busy screaming and standing on chairs.

Ollie figured out that dead mice made for a really short game. He decided to play catch-and- release. Catch a mouse, run through the house with it clenched in his jaws, drop it in a room where he'd never catch it again, and watch the Food Lady scream.

Last night was no different. Except that he did manage to catch it a second time. Mr Sweetie had had several many a couple of beers and was all wrapped up in talking to his buddy online. He was supposed to be keeping an eye on Ollie and his toy friend but he was having some difficulty in understanding his obligation to do so.

"Where's Ollie and the mouse?", said the chickenshit I.

"Well you know if I go chasing him he'll hide and he'll drop the thing and you'll scream louder." , he said.

'THAT WASN'T THE QUESTION. WHERE ARE THEY RIGHT NOW."

He heaved himself out of his chair and pretended to go looking for them.

"I DON'T WANT YOU TO FIND THEM. I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHERE. THEY. ARE."

"Oh. I dunno. Want me to go find them?"

Communication skills are seriously lacking here.

Crash bang in the bathroom. In the tub. Ewwww. I'll never take a bath again. Ewwwww. There's a mouse in my TUB.

ewwww ewww ewww.

Then I saw it. The answer to my phobia prayers. The vaccuum cleaner. With a 6-foot-long hose thing attached to it. And a three-foot metal wand. Desperate times, desperate measures. Turn on the vaccuum. March into the scary bathroom. Aim shoot suck running mouse into vaccuum. Run screaming. Mr Sweetie to the rescue, takes vaccuum bag out of vaccuum and tosses it out in the garbage pail.

Funny. I didn't know he knew how to turn the vaccuum off, or take the bag out. Hmmm. Maybe he's smarter than he lets on when it comes to technical things like the dishwasher. Hmmmm.

Ollie is still mad at us for kicking his friend out. Just wait till next time.

Ewwwwwwwwwwww.

It Was This Big

Yesterday was a pretty good day. All caught up with work and ready to do some catch up on the yard work. My neighbors can testify that yard work does not get done as often as they would like here at the J'Ollie Home. We live on a nice corner lot. When I moved back here several many years ago (this is my childhood home; my then four-year-old and I moved in with my mom after her dad and I split up) I was in my 30's, full of beans and plans. I started a garden with the help of my nephew.


It was a fairly big garden, I'm guessing 20 x 30 feet. Full of coreopsis, coneflowers, lilies, and roses. Lots of other pretties. I liked that garden so much that I thought a few more garden beds would be even better.


Eight more. Big ones.


"Man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"



Starting projects is my specialty. Maintaining and completing them is altogether a different matter. Gardens require a lot of maintainance. Working full time is not conducive to having the energy to maintain a whole lotta flowery real estate. I am jealous of admire folks with beatifully maintained gardens.



The gardens have really gone to pot. Not that kind of pot. We've been down-sizing the gardens in a desperate attempt to make it look a little more civilized and easier to maintain. The deer have been very helpful in pruning back all the stuff I'm trying to keep. Weeds? Nah...they don't eat no stinkin' weeds.....just the lilies and the good stuff. I wish they liked ivy as much as they liked my Stargazers.

We have the Ivy From You-Know-Where. It's that pretty English ivy that graces old brick buildings. Pretty till you get a closer look and realize that it's prying the siding away from the house, it's weasled its way under the windows, up to the top of the chimney, and will soon very soon will be sneaking down the chimney through the fireplace and into the living room where it will smother the cats and cover Mr. Sweetie any other inanimate objects in pretty green clingy foliage.


Fall is coming. I want to use the fireplace. I want chestnuts roasting on a open fire and some schmaltzy romance and a beer or two while we warm our toes. I want to toast marshmallows.

The Green Beast must be destroyed.


This Old House recently had an episode that featured a couple of homeowners renovating their gorgeous old three-story manor. Part of the renovation included ripping out all the the old ivy that was destroying the stucco. Two women, grabbing vines at the base of the house and r-r-r-r-r-ipping it off all the way past the second floor. As they stand on the ground. Easy schmeasy.

Right. Did I mention we have ivy on steroids?

We started at the bottom and ripped and tore and cussed and climbed a 10-foot ladder and ripped some more. Leaving about 20-odd feet of ivy dangling from the upper half of the chimney laughing and taunting us.


This is gonna mean somebody has to get a really really tall ladder and climb to the top of the chimney to tear off off the tons of remaining ivy. Or hop on the roof and sneak up on it from behind.

This is a job for Handy Man. Mr Sweetie is many things but he is not Handy Man. He is n.o.t. a.l.l.o.w.e.d. to climb ladders. He already broke his neck once. Once is enough.

I am not Handy Man either. I wouldn't mind climbing a really really tall ladder as long as there was a soft place to land when I look down and get dizzy and fall off of the ladder. I wouldn't mind climbing the roof if I had Spider Man's webby stuff shooting out of my sleeves. Maybe I could strike up an aquaintance with one of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Or some tall guy at the grocery store. Tall guys are always very obliging when a short lady asks them if they could reach her the Buffalo Wings way up on the top shelf of the freezer.

"Hello, would you mind grabbing that bag of frozen tater tots on the top shelf for me? thankyouverymuch. Oh, and by the way, would you come home with me and spend a few hours ripping ivy off of my chimney? No? There's a basketball game this afternoon? Darn."

Team Ivy: 1 Team J'Ollie: 0

That score is gonna change.

Butt-Kickin' Blogger! (Once in awhile, anyway...)

Wheee!! Miss South Carolina from Ramblings of a 30-Something Single Girl has bestowed a Kick-Ass Blogger award upon moi!

I'll be passing on the love just as soon as possible.

Lots to blog about, no time to do it.

Many thanks to Mr. Sweetie for pasting my shiny new button onto my blog page and doing the linky thing for me. Again, just haven't had time to learn these things on my own.

No sympathy needed. We aren't overwhelmingly busybusybusy, but busy enough to keep our heads above water running a business. We LIKE busy.

Thank you Carolina Girl! You kick butt too!

What, Me Worry?

I've been pretty much inspiration-free for the last couple of days. Actually I owe the Farmer's Wife a post about how Inspiration Grows Like Mold....the Inspiration is there, but it requires photos and pointers and things. Mr. Sweetie is in charge of the camera. It's one of those new-fangled gizmos with the adjustable flash and all kinds of bells and whistles. I am not camera literate. Yet. Mr Sweetie probably won't understand or appreciate taking pictures of what I want.

"You want me to take a picture of what? How is that funny?"

But that's not what I wanted to say. I got off on a tangent before I even started. Because I was going to post on one of humanities' favorite things to do EVER: (aside from shopping and eating)

Well, maybe it isn't our favorite thing, but we all excel at it ~ worrying. We are a global community of worrywarts.

Those of you whose life is perfect may be excused from this rambling.

I am a Champion Worry Wart. Meet my sister Sue, also know as Stew. She can what-if anybody under the table.

My mom was an underacheiver in the Worry Olympics. Throughout a life of circumstances and "shit happens" situations she would appear to be serene and calm, sailing through as if whatever crap life handed her things were just fine.

She was divorced in the early 60's when divorce was Not Done. She was in a car accident shortly after that and required eye surgery. I don't remember who took us four hooligans in while she was in the hospital, just that she wore an eye patch for a bit and that she acted as though this was completely normal.

She managed to clothe, feed and shelter us on a secretary's salary. Most of the clothes came from a cousin in New England after the cousin had outgrown them. We thought that getting a big box of clothes periodically was shopping. It was as big of a buzz then as mall shopping is now.

Every summer she'd load four kids and on several memorable occasions a full-grown German Shepherd into an old VW Beetle and drive from Ohio to northern Maine to visit her mother and family for a week. Calm and serene, no worries.

When we got too loud or obnoxious she'd yell "Heavens to Murgatroyd! By the Lord Harry!" We knew we'd truly crossed the line when she'd holler, "Hell's Bells!!!"

It's easy to cross the line when there are four small wiggling bodies and a German Shepherd in the back of a Bug.

I spent many of my formative years thinking that God's name was Harry.

She met and married my Dad after a two week courtship in the early 70's. She didn't spend much time at all worrying about putting a wedding together or the implications of spending the rest of their lives together. They just got on with it so they could get to the happily ever after.

The only time that she was really and truly overtly worried, overwhelmed and a jangling bag of nerves was when my Dad required emergency surgery for a ruptured gall bladder. After 15 years of marriage, and seeing the love of her life so ill, she had somehow lost the coping mechanism of saying "let go and let God." She worried and stewed and worried some more. Dad died suddenly ~ complications from multiple back-to-back surgeries led to a heart attack at 55.

Thank God for Stew, I mean Sue. Sue would make sure that Mom came to her house for lunch and a daily dose of Sue-ness. "I was taking a shower with the three-year old and she looked up at me and said, "Mommy, why do you have such big (and here I thought I'd have to explain breasts to a three year old) knees? " " A daily dose of Sue can get you through trying times.

Mom somehow managed to get through our house burning down, her mother's death, and her diagnosis of colon cancer, all within a few months of each other. Once again, she was like a duck, calm and serene on top of the pond, and paddling like hell beneath the surface. When the time came to sign up for hospice, she had the hospice nurse and a representative from Elderhostel come to visit almost simultaneously. She had an opportunity to go to New England to draw light houses, and damned if she was going to miss out. It didn't matter that she couldn't draw a stick figure or that she was too weak from chemo and advancing illness to walk more than a few feet.

Mom was moved to the hospice center when it was time. Had she been alert enough she probably would have hollered "Hell's Bell's" at her four hooligans. She was reclined in a big hospital chair with her little chemo beanie sliding over her eyebrows. We were worried that the lights were bothering her eyes so somebody (Sue) put some sunglasses on her.

The likeness to the dead guy in "Weekend at Bernies' " was uncanny, And I'm sorry, really, really funny.

We refrained from posing Mom in unlikely but hilarious positions. But we thought about it.

Apparently giggling in hospice is acceptable, as long as you don't bother anybody but the nurses.

We got a call from the hospice center the first night of Mom's admission. She'd fallen out of bed but had not sustained any injuries.

When we asked her what she was doing getting out of bed without help she said,

"Oh, I was so worried about the cat."

Moral of this hellishly long post: Don't worry about the cat. Just don't worry.

Customer Service at Its Best

I was standing in line at Wendy's today. There were several counter people taking folk's orders. One of them was a cute high school age boy.

A burly construction worker came up to the counter and asked the cute high school boy to refill his Coke. Burly Construction Guy had one of those basso profundo voices that can make your toes curl.

He could recite the ABC's and make it sound sexy and romantic.

High School Boy refilled the Coke and handed it over to Sexy Romantic Burly Construction Guy.

" Thanks man. Love you.", says Sexy Romantic Burly Construction Guy.

"Love you too. Have a good day." said High School Boy.

......?

Growing up, it seems like kids are tagged with labels that point out physical attributes, mental capacity, or some identifying factor that sticks for l.i.f.e. Any time I run in to folks I knew in elementary school and we catch up on each other's families, they don't remember names, but ask "How's the one that was so bossy?"

Big sis K is the Bossy One. She was cast in this role as soon as she acquired a little sis to boss around. She excels at her job and loves to tell people what to do.

Brother A. is the Smart One. He's the guy that took the MENSA test on a lark but wandered out before finishing the test because the answers were "too easy."

Sis S. is the Cute One. She is adorable inside and out. She's so cute that....well, when she was 36 her daughter was a senior in high school. Cute One saw that her daughter had left lunch at home so she ran it to the school. The principal saw Cute One in the school hallway and chided her, "young lady, shouldn't you be in class?" Read the numbers. Thirty-six. All natural. No fair.

Me? I'm the one with the boobs. Now, any of the above labels have some kind of almost complimentary ring to them. Who wouldn't want to be at least respected for their authority or smarts, or admired for being so darn cute?

What the hell do you do with boobs?

Kiss Them Bricks

The Brick Yard 400 commences today. All customary activity will be suspended. Shhhh. Watch as a bevy of macho race car drivers kiss the bricks. Listen intently as track conditions and shredding tires are discussed in e.x.c.r.u.t.i.a.t.i.n.g. detail.

Say "GO JEFF GORDON" at appropriate intervals.

pop a romantic schmaltzy girl movie in the other TV for the duration.

"Pride and Prejudice" anyone?

Survivor

I've been reading a lot of mommy blogs lately. Love the mommy blogs. Love the pics of the wee ones discovering the world around them.

This is dedicated to the mommies (and daddies too, I know you're there).

YOU WILL SURVIVE.

You will survive walking your child to their first day of kindergarten and leaving them with the crossing guard because they are NOT a baby and DO NOT want you to go IN with them.

You will survive when they change their mind halfway across the street and come back to have you escort them in to kindergarten. You will not cry, either.

You will not freak out when they come home from first grade with half their face torn off. You will calmly ask "what happened?" You will not laugh hysterically when you are told that Bobby was ignoring your precious child, so Precious Child grabbed Bobby's backpack strap and Bobby ran away. Wearing his backpack. With Precious Child firmly attached to backpack and leaving half of her face embedded in the asphalt. They're just skid marks.

You will agree that a bright orange jaquard print tee shirt, screaming purple skirt and red cowgirl boots do indeed make a stunning fashion statement on Picture Day.

You will survive being named Psycho Mom of the Year. You know very well that you are Psycho Mom because you are insane enough NOT to allow your 14 year old to get in a car with a TeenageDriver.

You will survive a phone call from the Emergency Room saying that your 14 year old daughter has been in a car accident. A TeenageDriver was at the wheel, somebody said something witty like "I've gotta fart", lost control of the car and drove Through A House.

You will NOT laugh hysterically when you arrive at the Emergency Room to see your child lying on a stretcher with a neck brace so large that it would've been a tad loose for the Incredible Hulk. (everybody lived to walk out of the ER unharmed. Any later harm would be a direct result of Parental Violence.)

You will survive and excel at terrorizing and intimidating both potential and official boyfriends. Having the advantage of being a few inches short of five feet tall and having perfected The Look will ensure that all boys will be on Auto-Scared the minute they pull in the driveway and HONK THE HORN for your Precious Child.

You will develop and perfect methods of dealing with Psycho Drama from your Precious Child, who by 15 is considerably taller than you. That's why God gave his children ears. Ears are not for listening. Ears are handles. Pull on the handle. The Precious Child will sit down on the floor and will LISTEN to you with the remaining ear. Do not relinquish your grasp on the handle until you are done speaking.

You will survive teaching your Precious Child how to drive, preferably in a car you no longer have any sentimental feelings about.

You will clap and cheer when Precious Child buys her very first car and helps to pay for it.

You'll survive your Precious Child's Orientation Day at college and moving into the dorm. You will escort her to her first classroom, although class won't start for another day. You will not cry. It feels a whole lot like the first day of kindergarten.

You will survive Year Number 21. Last year of college and on to grad school. You will not wonder where the time has gone. It's all right there. Oh, by the way, Precious Child's major is PSYCHO-logy.

Running On Empty

Thanks for stopping by. I'll be happy to entertain and delight you all just as soon as I think of something to say.

Or as soon as we get the chores done.

Meantime please put up with my empty blog page. I'll be sure to visit yours soon. Your life is far more entertaining. See you soon!