I HATE OLD PHONE LINES!!!!!

usually we only have a humming on the phone line after it rains, but now it won't go away! it doesn't help that these phone lines were put in in about 1978. i'm usually lucky to get a 26k connection. starting about wednesday, i could get connected, but after about 5 minutes would get disconnected, and it would re-dial in. starting on saturday, i couldn't even get connected at all the humming was so loud. i called at&t this morning and they are susposed to be out tomorrow. it's on their side of the line, i checked the lines in the house and they're fine. i hope they just replace the old lines coming into the addition that we live in. it's not like i'm expecting fiber or anything... just newer than the craptacular lines we've got.

did great at the county fair. won 1st place on the zucchini bread, 2nd on a purse i crocheted and felted, and 4th on a pic of jack.

well, guess that's all this week... stay tuned...

feel free to comment...

the beat goes on...

typical week around here... us all running around like chickens with our heads cut off.

i got voted president of the PTA like organization at my girls school. sapulpa didn't want to pay the $150 a year to use the PTA name, so sometime in the mid 80's they came up with their own for all the school sites. TAPS or Teachers And Parents of Sapulpa. you can only do two terms in any office, so since the last president had done her 2, and i was vice last year i got the top job this year. i also do the yearbook for the school. grades pre-k - 5. this will be my second year doing it, and it's a lot of fun. i do it all on computer, no real cutting a pasting. last year's was great.

glad the cooler weather has showed up as of about 9am this morning! this last week was just nasty. i mean, i wasn't as hot as it could have been, like it was this summer, but we'd had a break and then all of the sudden temps at 95 again! yuck! since the first day of fall is this coming weekend i hope the nasty 90's are gone for the season... but this is oklahoma and we've had the upper 80's in november. and then the whole next 6 weeks after that is a total deep freeze with temps in the 30's and lows at night at just too damn cold. this is a weird part of the country. but that's why i like it.

shopping again yesterday. this time i had a $20 chili's gift card to use. so, we dropped some books at the library in tulsa, ate, and went to promenade mall. the candy store beckoned... i dropped $17 in there (had to stock up on big hunk candy bars, this is the only local place i can find them. i bought 4 at $1.50 each.) and another $20 at walden books. the new captain underpants book just came out and my 9 yr old just loves that series, and i got a maryjanice davidson i didn't have in the undead/wyndam werewolf series.

today we went bowling after cleaning the office. i bowled an 87... yuck. mom bowled a 114. my 9 yr old got a 68 and the 7 yr old got a 47. we don't bowl much, but it is a fun way to pass a rainy afternoon. bowling is on the pricy side, i spent almost $18 on shoe rental for 3 and one game. i'm gonna need to dig up some coupons or something...

no news from the ex-bestfriend front. she's pretty good at holding a grudge... and she can be vindictive... so i'll just let sleeping dogs lie. she'll see what happens when she goes to recert for food stamps... he'll be back in school and she'll be in the workforce whether she likes it or not. they don't let you live and not work if you are able anymore. i'm very conservative, if you haven't already guessed. no work, no eat! people shouldn't be able to sponge off the government. either be a productive member of society or get out of the gene pool so we don't have you breeding off anymore like you. can't stand leaches... can you tell!?

yeah, well, busy week ahead... more than usual... stay tuned...

modern ending of a 27 yr friendship...

Sent: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 6:59 PMSubject: coat for j***
got back from pearls. she gave me a boys london fog coat, i think size 7 or 8. it looks like it would fit j***. it's dark green and brown. i'll try to drop it by this week, when's a good time?
ttyl, vbffae- ******
Everything is dangerous to your health,So quit worrying about it!

Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: coat for j***
Would you believe this is the THIRD time I'm trying to compose this email???? I never thought I would miss AOL but Juno internet sucks #@###@@!!!!!!! I officially signed off on aol Sat. but this is only temporary - we're getting DSL on the 16th!!! Att/Yahoo is finally available here so dad signed up & even ordered a modem that will allow multiple computers to connect (you can even use it for wireless). I can't wait!
Anyway...about the coat - great!!! I bought one on clearance last year, but the smallest they had was a 10-12 & it's still too big. He wears a 7 in shirts (a 5 in bottoms - I dunno why, but boys' pants seem to run really big. Mom bought him some size 7's & they look like they would almost fit G****!) Whenever you wanna come by is fine, just let me know ahead of time to be sure we're home. I gotta go mail a package sometime in the next couple of days & we'll prob do some shopping sometime this week.
School - yes, he still loves it, but.... we are now homeschooling! For about a week & a half I guess. I had signed up for an immunization exemption because I don't agree with some of the crap they wanted to stick in my kid... all those shots made him sick & there were just more & more & I really think it's overkill. Anyway, well the school had no problem with it, but the school nurse decided to make waves & the exemption wound up getting kicked back by the state health dept. They said my reason for not wanting them was medical & needed a doctor's note. *sigh* The lady at the school wanted me to re-file as a religious exemption , but you have to have a member of clergy & anyway it was just going back & forth & so I just pulled him & started teaching him at home. He's doing an online program for reading & phonics - he has lessons every day & I invested in a stack of really great workbooks & stuff - the same kind of stuff he was bringing home from school. We have school every day (including today, I saw no reason not to) & he's doing well. His favorite subject is math, which surprised the heck out of me. The math worksheets in the kindergarten workbooks are way too easy for him, so I got a first grade book. The only downside to homeschooling is not being around other kids, but... you can't have everything. I found an online group of homeschoolers in Oklahoma & there a ton of resources online & even through the state dept. of education.
Anyway... well, he did got to school long enough to catch a respiratory infection (naturally). We didn't have a doctor anymore since we haven't been on Soonercare in forever, so I had to hunt one up that would take a new patient with no insurance (dad let me use the credit card) & wound up going to see Dr. Ho. He charged me $84 just for an office visit which was less than 10 minutes & during which he only listened to J***'s chest & looked in his ears! Anyway we got 3 prescriptions (one was samples, the other two cost me $30 in generic) one of which was the antibiotic he needed. Whew! He seems to be pretty much getting over it now (at least I *really* hope so... he's hardly been coughing at all today).
Oh - one other little tidbit - On the Virtual Villagers website they now have a teaser - "Coming this winter... the saga continues!" Hmm..... & I noticed a lot of people posted on the message board that they were pretty well annoyed with how the game didn't have any real ending.
Anyway, I guess that's it for now. Lemme know when's a good time for you to come by & we'll work it out! & thanks again about the coat! :)
vbffae
M****

Sent: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 5:49 PMSubject: Re: coat for j***
ok, i'm going to lay into you a bit now. no, there are not too many shots! i don't think there are near enough what with all the damn mexicans coming in without any shots and sending their kids to school with ours and all. hell, i think they need to re instate the small pox shot. the girls got every one (except that rotovirus one, cause they wern't in daycare), and sure they may have ran a temp and been fussy and had a runny nose... but it's sure better than getting the killing nastyness that the shots prevent! and that whole autism thing is a big load of bullshit! i think that one has to do with some DNA marker they haven't identified yet. i over looked you keeping him out of pre-k cause of the full day thing, but if you don't stop mollycoddling j*** he's going to turn out like f-ing james k.!!!!! it's nice that your parents helped you out and gave you a reprieve on not having to support yourself when he was young, (more than my parents would have done, there would have been an adoption), but it's time you got on with your life. get training if you need it, you won't have to pay for it. if i didn't, you surely won't. other single moms can do it and so can you! i believe in you! even if you don't sometimes, i think. sure, you've been dealt a sucky hand what with tommy and then billy, but gads, you can't let that dictate the rest of your life! you can't let other people ruin your life. you have to pick yourself up and get on with it! you're smart! you can do whatever you want! other moms have had it worse than you, and they pick themselves up and just do it. i well know that you don't like being told what to do, i've known you for more years than i care to think about, you're like the sister i never got, we've been through everything (and i do mean EVERYTHING) together. i don't think that you'd let anyone else tell you what i have. you'd shut them down before they could start. but, it has to be said. i'm telling you this because you're practactly my sister and i love you! i want to see you make more of your life and not just drift from day to day...

ok, done with rant.

it will have to be next week before i can get over there with the coat. wednesday is wash, thursday i've got an appt. at DHS, and friday i've got to clean a house with mom in the morning before class. only this last semester and i'm done, then it's off to the work force. where i can hopefully get a nice job that pays about 30k a year.

ttyl, vbffae- ******
Everything is dangerous to your health,So quit worrying about it!

my parents are behind me 100% about the shots. i don't tell you how to raise your kids (ie what's up with the hubby who gets drunk & doesn't work? and why can't they go trick or treating? you went EVERY year until you were 13! & if *** isn't going to work why don't you??? your house is held together by dct tape, ******!)I know you are a very opinionated person, but you can't expect everyone else to live their lives according to YOUR opinion. I do what I believe is best for my child, sorry to burst your bubble, but what YOU feel is best doesn't come into it. and what the hell does Tommy have to do with this anyway??? You are way too controlling, ******. You think you should decide what is best for everyone & they should just go along with it.

Please don't bother about the coat. We can live without it & I don't want you to come over. Please don't call me either. I've put up with a lot of crap from you over the years but this time you've gone too far. You can go off & live your perfect life - beer cans & duct tape included, blissfully unaware that your life isn't perfect and you don't control the universe. Plus I don't want J*** expose to these ideas you have about how screwed up he must be just because his father isn't around. (I guess it could be better - his father could be laying drunk with a cigarette on the coach all day - yee-haw) I've known this was coming for awhile.

- M****

so, yeah... guess that's all. that's my week. stay tuned...

i love fall... and eddie izzard...gross fridges

glad to have the cooler weather! it's nice to walk out in the morning and not be met with a steam bath! now, i go out and just stand in my tank top and panties first thing in the morning with my coffee and just enjoy the view and the wonderful feel of the morning. the great thing about living in the country is that i can stand on my deck in my tank top and panties and no one sees me...and if they do... they're trespassing! the only time during the year that i can see another house from my house is when the leaves come off the trees, then i can see my parents house about 1000 ft. away, through the woods on the other side of the pond. i do love privacy. we lived in town for over 2 years after we got married in a duplex, the only upside i could see the town living was pizza delivery. i was happy when this house was done enough to live in and we could be in the woods. i do not like living so close to people... it's just not natural! how those people in europe do it, i've no clue. they all live in high rise apartments and similar type housing, the only people who live in the country are the rich. but that's what you get when you have socialism or should i say soft communism... i love living in this country, thank you very much! glad i got born here!

so, on to the eddie izzard... i love eddie izzard! he's the funniest comedian there is! if you haven't seen any of his stuff, you must now take yourself over to netflix and put him in your queue. his bit on flags and how europe took over the world in "dress to kill" is sooooooo true! his take on history and life in general is just a total laugh riot.

life around here is in the groove that i like. on a schedule! the first two weeks of school went by so quickly. my oldest is losing teeth like they're going out of style. she's got her 12 year molars coming in 2 yrs early and has lost the canine and the molars behind them on the bottom. i don't know how she's chewing anything! she's got the front 4 teeth on the bottom, space where the teeth are gone, the two molars behind that and then the new molars coming in! she looks funny! she's got 12 teeth in her tooth jar how. her sister has 6. they both have one of those little pimento jars to keep lost teeth in. i don't eat pimentos, but the jars looked the size i wanted, so i bought the jars and threw out the contents. did that to get small juice glasses too. bought that cheese spread that comes in the little glasses and threw out the contents. that stuff is nasty, but the glasses are just the right size. i'm not one of those butter bowl, pickle jar savers! but if i see a glass container that i can reuse, i'll buy the product for it, even if i don't like it.

i throw out butter bowls, they are not tupperware! you can go into people's fridges and never find the butter! just lots of science projects! my mom cleans houses, and over the years there have been about 4 really nasty fridges. the worst was so gross that by the time she was done with it, they had maybe a 1/4 of what they started out with. you can die from food poisoning, you know! some people don't think about this. they just eat, and don't seem to connect the dots when they get food poisoning a lot. take out food has about 24 hours to live before it needs to get tossed in the trash.

i found a really neat science experiment in my mom in laws fridge once. it was in a bowl, partly covered with foil, i think it was some can soup heated up... maybe. anyway, there was red, orange, green, blue, yellow, and a purplish color of mold growing on it. the fuzzy kind, all the different colors were a different patch. i think back and wish i had had a camera to preserve the moment.

or the bag of goo in one of mom's cleaning jobs pantry... it used to be potatoes! she left a note and said there was a stink in the pantry and if we could please find it. i found it... and about threw up from the site and the stench! i didn't know potatoes did that.

ok, enough of the grossness.

yesterday we went shopping on the 71st street parking lot. for those of you not familar with tulsa, this is the area of 71st street between memorial to garnet. we had a plan, we entered the area from the south up memorial, turned right on 71st and went to old navy, bed, bath and beyond and then ate lunch at on the border. this was all in the same parking lot. then we took a right out of that lot and went to linens and things. from there we took a left and went to hobby lobby and gordmans. then we wound around in that parking lot to get to the light signal by comp usa across from lowes. we went left again, under highway 169 and went to super target. we went to the east end of that parking lot and went right (south) on garnet to 81st, where we went right and got on south bound 169 which turns into the creek turnpike which we took back to sapulpa. it's best to never back track on that street. never. and never, NEVER, try to make a left turn without a left turn signal. i mean this! trust me!

ok, well, i've rambled a bit here, so i'll go. stay tuned...

evil safety videos from hades! pluto is still a planet!!!

back to school week! the girls are happy with their new teachers, the school years is off to a great start.

every year you have to re-watch the safety videos and pass the tests. there are 10. 10 horrible safety videos. if they didn't make them for people with IQ's of 3, they might be watchable... maybe, like if i was really bored and there was NOTHING else to do. these one's are new, they're on the careersafeonline.com website. the other videos were on cd's we had to watch on the computer... when the disk choose to work, that is. these are at the website... and work when the network chooses to. after the first day of things not wanting to load, the teacher switched to the other server and it was all better. but we still had to watch the stupid things and pass the tests with 100%. not hard.

jack is fine after his trip to the vet. he was a bit mad at us for a few days, but has gotten over it and is at the end of our bed to sleep at night.

lovely storm last night... NOT! the power went off for almost 2 hours, but with that lightening... how could it not. one struck pretty close to the house from how it felt. i don't like storms like that. can't we just get rain and not the nasty bad stuff with it? i shouldn't even be asking that question... this is oklahoma.

notice they sent our dear ex judge straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200. nice to see justice being served! and they got that chick that didn't show for the trial in jail too. my dad says that if thompson isn't kept from the general population in prision, then he'll wind up some guys girlfriend. especally if they find out he's a ex-judge. but that's his problem. if he would have kept it in his pants he wouldn't be in this mess...

so, what's up with this whole pluto thing? i mean, really, do they have nothing else to do? do they not have lives? this is like the stupidest thing ever! i refuse to acknowledge this decision... pluto is still a planet!!!!!! and it's ur-anus NOT ur-ah-nus!!! and it's ha-rass-ment NOT harris-ment!!! harris-ment is when you're being bugged by some guy named harris. I AM NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT AND I REFUSE TO START BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT!!! SO THERE!!!

so, ok, yea... i guess that's all for now. stay tuned...

photo of redneck a/c shade

ok, so here is the pic. i tried to post another, but blogger is being annoying. i put 2 holes in the umbrella and then threaded a string under two ribs and back out and attached it to the cup hook screwed in above the window. this holds it in position. the duct tape keeps the handle from moving. looks awful, but my a/c works better now.

back to real life...

well, tomorrow means back to real life... but this is a good thing as i think we've been ready to go back for about 2 weeks. we went to meet the teacher night on friday, and both girls got teachers i like. and the girls like them, so that's even better.

as to school supplies, this year i refused to buy kleenex or baby wipes. those aren't school supplies! i may send kleenex come winter cold season 'cause both of mine tend to use a lot and it's only fair to everyone. but they're in 2nd and 4th grade this year, and i don't think they need baby wipes.

my 7 yr old finally learned to ride her bike, and she's been busy practicing. mostly in the morning and evening 'cause of the nasty heat.

speaking of heat... i had to do something to make the old, on it's last legs, a/c make it through the rest of the season. it sits in a window on the front south side of our house and catches the sun all day with no shade. so... i created the redneck a/c shade out of a big old umbrella, some string, a screw in cup hook and of course... some duct tape. (i was going to add a photo, but blogger is messing up and won't load it. i'll still try to post it though.)

jack took off again, but came home two days later. he's still on supervised, leashed visits to the great outdoors to potty. thank goodness he's house trained. but the funny is that when he gets out side after being in for most of the day, he does what we are refering to as the "austin powers pee". you know from the first movie. he'll hike his leg and pee 'til he almost falls over! it's the funniest thing to see! the girls just laugh and laugh. the morning after he returned, i took him on a walk. we got to the back of the property, and he just wouldn't do #2 on the leash. so, silly me took it off and followed him. i got to go on what i'm calling "jack's safari". i haven't climbed so many fences since i was 11! he ended his outing at the new housing addition marking his territory on a fence post of a big mean dogs yard. i caught up with him, put him back on the leash, but he wouldn't follow no matter how hard i tugged or promised him puppy treats. i ended up carrying him most of the way home, about 1/2 a mile even with the short cut. have you ever climbed a barbed wire fence with a dog? don't try it! he only weights maybe 16 lbs. but still! he seems to have finally given in to the leash, thankfully. tomorrow is his vet visit for his neuter and it's also his 2nd birthday. heck of a birthday.

my 7 yr old tells me this week that "papa got earings on his chest!" i kept my face straight and said "isn't that silly?!" and she said "yes! he's silly!" then she went on with her game on the computer. i was hoping they wouldn't see this, but oh well. my 9 yr old hasn't said anything about it and i'm not bringing it up. i haven't even said anything to my mom, i just don't want to know anything more than i already do.

well, guess that's all... stay tuned...

countdown and swimming

one week until normal schedule! everyone is looking forward to getting back to the usual things.

jack showed back up! after almost 2 weeks of running after females in heat, he came home yesterday. he had a bath, food, water, and is now on supervised visits to the great outdoors. he goes in monday to get neutered and fixed up. he came home with quite a few cuts, i've no clue what he's been up to. this morning i took him out to potty, and he led me over to the neighbors house through their horse pasture. i think that's where he's been hanging out, he seemed friendly with the two dogs there. he wouldn't follow me home, so i had to carry him. good thing he's only about 16 pounds. he's napping on the back of the couch in the living room now.

at a friend's pool on friday. my 9 yr old will finally jump off the side of the pool (wearing an inflatable ring) into the water. i don't know where the fear of water comes from! my 7 yr old somehow has turned into a little fishy! she'll jump off the side (without ring), and she taught herself to swim underwater. she'll even swim in the deep end! we're so proud. we're going swimming again on wednesday.

glad the horrid heat seems to be waning. it was 110F outside on thursday! i don't want to know what the heat index was. we got a little rain, maybe 1/4 inch, but better than nothing.

ok, i have to go on a bit of a rant here about ill named children. this is my major pet peeve! lately it seems that people are having problems giving their sons proper names. this one guy i know has a son named adriel, this is one of the names for the angel of death. this other family i know named their son jewell ray, i don't care if jewell is a family name, what in gods name were they thinking! just wait until he gets to middle school! or this other family, the boy's name is dayton! that's a damn brand of tires! or other people naming their kids after states... why? i knew a girl in jr. high whose name was summer rain, she hated her parents for doing this to her and swore that as soon as she turned 18 she was changing it to something normal like susan, mary, or elizabeth. people, please, think before naming! what sounds cute for a baby will not be cute for a grown-up. really can you see the CEO of a major company named mitzy? no. mitzy is a pole dancer (stripper).

ok, am now done with rant.

done with post for this week.

stay tuned...

utterly disgusted and "is madonna alive?"

ok, we'll start with the utterly disgusted thing. i discovered this week that my 55 yr old father got his nipples pierced! i saw him with his shirt off for the first time in years (well it has been hot) and that's when i saw the two new additions to his body. i did not say anything... Completely ignored it. i have a theory about people who pierce anything but their ears and/or get overly tattooed... they have a deep physiological problem that makes them think they need people to look at them/pay attention to them all the time. they all need to go see shrinks to get over themselves. there's this funny comic i have on my fridge, the father asks the son who has his face overly pierced, "tell me son, did it hurt when the tackle box exploded in your face?".

anyway, with dad, i think he's going through yet another childhood or teenage hood. at least he did this after i was grown and gone. just like the thing with the local crack whore about 5 years ago. i would have ditched his ass, but mom kept him.

but i did have to deal with the whole pot growing thing, and prison time thing. he got busted the first time when i was 11. the second time right before the summer after my 9th grade year. he spent 3 months in boley that summer. the last time was right after i graduated high school. they didn't keep him long, and gave him probation. he was horrible after that, real mean and hateful. i called nana and she sent me money for a plane ticket to visit her and papa. i stayed 2 months, then mom called and said it was safe to come home, he was better now. whatever...

the only thing that exposure to the drug scene did for me was to make me never do any of it. when i was 11 my mom's brother lived in a small cabin on our land. one evening, i took over his dinner that mom had cooked for him. his girlfriend and her brother were visiting. she was snorting a line of coke, the brother had a needle in his arm, my uncle was smoking pot. i looked at these people, they were so gross and skinny and dirty... i thought to myself, "if that's what drugs do to you... i'll skip that teenage experiment thank you!". and i did. the worst i ever did was smoke a few cigarettes. the tobacco kind, not the pot kind.

ok, now on to the "is madonna alive?" thing. my 9 yr old listens to radio disney, they've been playing that "1985" song alot lately, so that's what prompted the question. a better question would be "is michael jackson still alive?". because is he? really? the true human who was born michael joseph jackson? i don't think so. i think somewhere around the early 90's he died on the plastic surgeons table, and what was brought back from the dead is some mutant...

ok, yeah... 2 more weeks to go. lots more heat until fall gets here... sometime in october... maybe. gotta love it.

stay tuned...

update on icky trial

nice to see that the missing witness is still alive... shocking! anyway, she filling a motion to get rid of the arrest warrant for her when she didn't show up in court. i just glad she's not sporting new cement shoes at the bottom of sahoma lake.

gotta love creek county!

three more weeks...

three more weeks and the girls will be in school, and i'll be enjoying my morning before heading off to central tech for my afternoon class. it will be nice to be back in the swing of normal routine.

slow week. i was in town on monday and friday, got stuff done around the house on the days i was home. finally got that ratty old chair out of the living room and onto the back porch with the other old recliner to await when i can get the neighbor to come over with his pick up and haul them off. i hate our living room furniture, it's so ratty, and yes... duct taped! we've had it 10 years and you can tell. it's the nauga hide, over stuffed kind. we bought the love seat, couch and chair to match after we'd been married about 6 months. we called it the "child friendly furniture", cause you could 409 it and wipe up anything that got on it. and it really has been child friendly... and cat friendly. that's where the duct taping comes in. i will be so happy when we can get new furniture. i feel like hauling it out by the burn barrel and setting it ablaze. i actually did do that with the baby changing table after my youngest was potty trained. it was so dead after two kids, that i had it held together with those plastic zip ties. it was a happy day to see that thing go up in flames! no more diapers! it was very liberating!

just got back from our walk, took almost an hour. nice to be back in the house with the a/c's cranked up. looking for jack (our dog, jack russell zhits tsu(sp?) mix) his sister dotsie(she belongs to our neighbor) followed us. he's out nosing around again. we found a dead rabbit on the road and she tried to drag it home! i made her drop it. i don't think it had been dead long cause the flies hadn't found it yet.

interesting note about the toaster i bought week before last, the directions were only in english! that was so weird! usually everything comes with directions in at least 3 languages, english, french, and spanish.

found a great blog. stephanieklein.com or as the title says "greek tragedy". it's very funny. check it out if you get the chance. just google either of those and you will find it.

well not much going on, so i guess i'll go for now. stay tuned...

wall climbing snakes, and toasters...

bought a new toaster. we've been married 11 years and never had to buy one 'cause we got 2 as wedding gifts. anyway, the second one just died, so i went to walmart and bought the $7 2 slice model. it's white, the old ones had both been chrome, and i'm not sure it fits in with my 70's harvest gold thing i got going on in my kitchen. but, as they don't make harvest gold toasters, i guess it'll have to do.

re read the harry potter series this past week, i've got all 6 in hardback with those plastic dust jacket covers like the library has on their books. i also have all the princess diaries in hardback. have the whole cat who mystery series in first edition paperbacks. as well as lots of other series too. i guess you could say i have a series problem.

well, on to the snake portion of this blog post. my bestfriend (we've know eachother since we were 7 and 8. we're 34 and 35 in december, 2 days apart) had a little visit with a copper head. i have pasted the e-mail she sent below...

Mom & I had a bit of an adventure yesterday - I started to step out the front door & nearly stepped right on a copperhead snake! It was right in front of the door & I only saw it as it raised up to strike when I started to put my foot down. Boy did I move fast! Scared the living crap out of me! It was a pretty big snake, too - about 4 foot long. Mom went out thought the garage to get the hoe to kill it & when she got out there, she called out that she couldn't see anything. So I opened the door again to look & the damn snake was ON THE WALL!! It was nearly at eye level with me - up to about where the doorbell is. I didn't even know they could climb like that & it was *really* unnerving to see it there! She knocked it down with the hoe & it went after it, but she managed to pin it down. The hoe wasn't sharp enough to cut it, so I got a shovel & she held it pinned while I cut its head off (what a lovely experience that was!) & then the damn thing was still moving all over the place while we scooped up the two pieces & threw it out into the road. All either of us could think was that Jake & Ollie are constantly running in & out & if either one of them had been the one out the door, they would've surely been bitten. It's a miracle Ollie didn't run out as soon as I opened the door - he almost always does. Mom & I are both paranoid as hell now - we're making sure to look before we go out the door!

i'm glad that was her experience and not mine. i have my own fun tarantula story from when i was about 15. my bedroom was in the loft, so the area where i had my bed was kinda at the roof, the foot of the bed touched the ceiling, the head of the bed was out toward the middle of the room. so, anyway, i was just lying on the bed watching tv, and i turned over for some reason... and there it was... all big, black and furry! on the ceiling... like 2 feet from my head! i'm sure people could hear that scream in the next county. i rolled off the bed, screaming, dad rushed in from down stairs and killed it and took the corpse outside. i had nightmares for weeks afterward, and sometimes it creeps back into my dreams.....

well, that's all for this week...

...and it keeps on draggin'

the house never sees so much of us except in the summer. usually we're only here to eat breakfast, dinner and to sleep.

saturday we stayed home, except to go to the neighbors house. i had to reload winxp on her computer.

yesterday, i left the kids home while i went to church with my mom. we had lunch after, then cleaned the office we do on sunday's. a lawyers office. when i got home the computer was still off, so i left it that way, thought it needed a vacation.

the girls were in the living room with my husband watching the end of home alone 2, next up on the family channel was the 1st harry potter movie, so we watched that together. our netflix movie had arrived, corpse bride, so we watched that next. it's been awhile since we had a movie afternoon, but with the heat, it's not like you can do anything outside.

so far this morning, i walked the trash down to the barrel at the end of the driveway, watched the youngest try to ride her bike, watched the dogs go for a swim in the pond, and saw the cat get chased by said dogs. the air conditioners (2 window units) got a whole hour off before getting turned on again. the house is dark, the only light in this room is what's coming off the computer screen. the only light in the living room is off the tv. 101 today... the outside won't see me again until the sun goes down.

interesting week. israel is finally defending itself, oil prices are again climbing, gas prices are icky... but on a bright note, the space shuttle managed to land safely instead of breaking up on re-entry. always a good thing. i can deal with the gas prices, raised by those damn stock market people raising the price of oil, what i can't deal with is a blown up shuttle. so i'm glad those silly people are back down on terra firma. there's nothing in space, i have no idea why we go. seems a total waste of money.

managed to pack on 10 pounds this summer... mostly due to my love affair with the big mac. i'm aching to get to chili's and build my own burger... or to carl's jr. for one of those sour dough bacon guacomole cheese burgers. 1200 calories all by it's itty bitty self, we won't discuss the fat content. i'm making pasta for dinner. i brown a pound of italian sausage, add a can of thick and chunky garlic and herb pasta sauce and one 8oz. can of tomato sauce. toss with 2 cups uncooked pasta, cooked. i like the corkscrew kind.

well, guess that's all for this week. stay tuned...

why does summer stretch so long...

it's only the second week of july and it seems that summer has been here forever... how about you? the girls are driving me nuts, have you too heard the phrase "i'm bored! there's nothing to do!" as well from your children? and it's not like they don't have anything to do! they've got their own computer with all the games they could ever want (no internet on their's, just mine), they've got a library of books (i have a slight book problem, i have my own library as well), 2 gameboy sp's, 2 gameboy colors, and lots of games for both. did i mention the directv with like 15 kid friendly channels? or the 10 acres we live on with lots of room to explore? kids today! they're so different from when i was growing up.

of course, i too have been a little bored. i've read at least 15 books since summer started, i've played big kahuna reef 2 until that song is in my head forever, i've watched dvd's (we got netflix! gotta love it!), i've crocheted lots of dish rags...

but... still... it's there...

maybe it's the unstructuredness of it all... that has to be it. when it's not summer, we're on a time schedule, we know what's gonna happen... every second of the day. in summer, it just kinds flows... you look at the clock... it's noon... really?! where did the morning go?

although, it hasn't all been that way. yesterday morning we took a walk and noticed that our vacationing neighbors mailbox had been knocked down. the mail man had already given him one of those notices. so, we collected his mail, stuck it in his house, went back to ours and got the post hole digger. dad caught me (we share the 10 acres with my parents) and asked what i was doing. i explained. he took the post hole digger and went and re-installed the mailbox. like i can't do these things! who do you think put up our mail box? me! anyway, it's back up and the postal guy won't go postal. my husband would have done this, but he's over at his brothers this weekend helping him put up fence.

we've been to the lake (heyburn) a few time too. it's so nice and quiet over there. the first time we went, my cell phone madly rang. it was the mystery shopping company that handles sonic. they needed a shop done on the bristow one like NOW. they paid me $5 extra to do it. we were already almost half way there, so i said, sure. great food, quick service, but boy do they have a fly problem! ugh! it was awful! keep your windows rolled up if you eat there. i hadn't been in bristow in like years, nice place. they have a pizza hut! no fair! sapulpa used to have 2 of them, now one is the whataburger(not fast food by the way... slow slow food! do not use the drive thru! i have been in that line for like 15 minutes before, go inside, it's quicker), and the other is a family diner.

well, ok... guess that's all for now. maybe something exciting will happen this week...

it's finally over... maybe...

ok, so, the nasty trial of our ex-judge thompson is finally over...thank god! it made the national news, is how gross it was.

but, i knew about the whole thing before it "hit the fan" so to speak. best friend has a friend whose brother is a baliff, who saw it happen and told his sister who called my bestfriend who called me and said "are you ready to be totally grossed out?!" and i was all "oh! god! let me have it.". so, she told me, and i was " like oh my god! that is the grossest thing like ever!". being the nosey person that i can be, i googled the object in question that he used on the bench while presiding over cases, and found that they have an "excutive model", so i called BF back and asked her if she thought that that's what he had, and she was like "you googled that! you would! and yes, that's probably what he had! this is just soooooo gross and weird!"

so, if you haven't been keeping up, he got guilty on all 4 counts with a year in jail for each and a $10,000 fine for each as well. the local paper "the sapulpa daily herald" had a lovely front page with "GUILTY" on it and a large picture of said ex-judge which i plan on cutting out and using for a dart board target.there's another charge that they can't get him on cause the witness has disappeared... she was last seen with the ex-judge. the charge was porn on a state computer, pics of this chick and the ex-judge. so, anyway, i see two ways this could go: 1) she was paid off to leave town and leave no forwarding address or 2) they'll find her with a new ball and chain necklace in lake sahoma (which is the water supply for the local area). i hope it's the first one, but in this county, it will probably be the second.

before i end this entry, i will say that he did one nice thing for me a few years back. i got a jury notice and had to go to his court to report. i was 8 months pregnant with my oldest. he knew me from when i worked at the local dry cleaners, so he says "what are you doing here?" and i held out the notice and said "this says i have to be here", and he took it from me and said "get out of here already! see ya around!".

ok, so that's my ramblings this week, same place next week for a different topic.