This may come as a complete shock, but from time to time, I am accused of being a bit dense. I know, I know! Total surprise, right? RIGHT? No?
OK, well disagree if you must but it happens. Lately though, I've become very observant. Make yourself comfortable, I'm going to share some of my observations with you.
- Those leaves I didn't want to rake the other day when it was so nice outside because I wanted to go take pictures? They aren't so fun to rake when they're wet, after a ton of rain. In the cold. With worms squirming out of them. Being dive-bombed by birds and crows looking for a big fat juicy worm.
- I'd be happy to never eat another bloody apple again! I'm never going apple picking again. Ever! I hate apple pie, apple dumplings, apple oatmeal crisp cookies, apple muffins and ESPECIALLY APPLE CRISP!
- I shouldn't ever say that I'm never going to dye my hair, myself, again. There is a box of Feria sitting on my bathroom counter, just waiting for me.
- Every week I set one goal for myself when it comes to leaving the house and interacting with others. This is something new. Last week it was a quick run to the grocery store to pick up a few things. I wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible. Not only was I not looking forward to this, but I had the Little Imp with me and those of you who have ever shopped ANYWHERE with a toddler know that it can occasionally be a task better handled by a Drill Sargent rather than an emotional midget like myself. My biggest goal was to just survive the trip and not draw any attention to myself. The Little Imp had other ideas. We walk into the store and the first thing we spot is one of those stupid shopping carts with the kiddy car thing on the front. You know the ones I mean? Here, for illustrative purposes I'll show you just what I'm talking about...
Sorry about the craptastic quality of the picture. I took it with my cell.
My observation about these kiddie cart things? They make grocery shopping a whole entire new Hell with a toddler. They are hard to manuvere. Case in point; I took out an entire endcap display of Tylenol Gelcaps, Kleenex and Vitamin C. By the time we were done shopping I needed one of the bottles of Tylenol. Those kiddie carts are a pain in the ass!So much for wanting to get in and out and not draw any attention to myself.
This week my goal includes surviving lunch with Megawatt on her college campus. She has invited me to spend the afternoon with her there, and share a meal with her and some of her friends. There are going to be lots of people around. Too many probably. I'm going to take the camera so I can hide behind it.
Don't go anywhere. I'm not done yet.
- My pets are strange. They just are.
- Take Griffy for instance. He is annoying. But he's a cat and that's par for the course. He's also very peculiar. He follows the hubby and Little Imp on their evening walks, and he feels the need to babysit her whilst she's in the bath. I am soooo not joking. If you think that's strange, he even dips his tail in the water, for what reason? We don't know. The only thing we can guess is that it makes her giggle. The more the Little Imp giggles when he does it, the more frequently he does it. I told you he was a strange cat.
- Even my child is strange...cute, but strange!
- Griffy gets even stranger. Every night when we put Casey to bed (he's crate trained, thankfully!) he has this habit of saying goodnight to him. OK, he's probably doing it to tease the dog, but I like to think he's saying goodnight in his own special, annoying way.
- Further observations include the fact that we are packrats! Remember how I said I was going to start sorting through stuff and getting rid of it? I started tonight and whilst going through a lot of crap that I'm trying to tell myself we have no use for, I came to the sudden realization that we are suffering from an incurable case of packratitis.
- Here are some of the treasures I unearthed tonight.
What is all this stuff you ask? Well, lets take these glass vases for instance...
...I can't possibly get rid of them. I have 8 in all. Most of them are large, about 1/2 gallon in size, and all are full to the top of shells and sea glass. No, seriously, I can not get rid of them because they represent the year I spent on this side of the pond whilst we legally immigrated the hubby over from the UK. All those shells and bits of sea glass are remnants of my long walks along the shore, thinking, dreaming and hoping for the day when our long wait would be over. So there is no possible way I'm parting with them.
Yet more stuff. French Francs and British stamps. Hell, I don't know why we need to hang onto the stamps. But once the hubby sees this, he'll probably attach some sentimental value to them. Now the French Francs? You betcha I'm holding onto those! Why? Because m'dears they are no longer in circulation. The French use the Euro now. And who knows, one of these days when we've all spent all of our money into oblivion, those Francs might be worth something. Perhaps I can exchange them for some water or bread. That reminds me, I might want to tuck away some US dollars and coins too; they may become obsolete at some point as well.
I know, I'm not very good at the "getting rid of" part of all this, am I?
Oh but wait, here's something I can toss!
I'm not exactly sure why I bought this whilst living in the UK or how it ended up making its way back across the pond. In case you can't read the writing, it's called "Relaxing Rub..Helps to ease and relax muscle aches and cramps during your period." Don't ask me where the hell you're supposed to rub this stuff because I never used it.
Whilst I was sitting on the floor going through the box above, I realized that the hubby has kept every single memento of not only our cross-Atlantic courtship, but the time we had to spend apart due to immigration and setting up residence over here.
Every time he'd come and visit on this side of the pond, I'd send him back to the UK with a care package of sorts. Sometimes it was homemade goodies, other times it was nuts and hard candy. I used to put sweet but corny little sayings on the plastic containers I'd put this stuff in, "Sweets for my Sweetie", or like the one pictured below; "Nuts for my Nut." It wasn't until I was going through that stuff tonight that I realized he had hung onto them.
So of course, I can't get rid of those either.
I did actually manage to get rid of some stuff though. 7 pairs of Continental Airlines headphones. 3 British Airways First Class "kits" that contained ancient body lotion, mouthwash, and soaps as well as eye covers and thick socks. I kept one of those kits just for the hell of it.
Of course, my strange cat had to be part of all the action when it came to tonight's festivities.
Final observation...I might be slow, and a little dense, but I love my family of strange kiddos and pets and unusual odds and ends that we find it hard to part with, but they're all part of this unusual circus here at Barking Mad.
