Do children under the age of 12 lack tastebuds? Wherever you go the children's menu seems to consist of chicken nuggets, mac & cheese, spaghetti & meatballs, or pizza. 25¢ worth of pasta with a $5 price tag. We were thinking about going to the Bonefish Grill and absolutely salivated over the wonderful choices on the menu...warm mango salsa over grilled Ahi Tuna or Pistachio Parmesan Crusted Rainbow Trout with Lemon Butter with a nice bottle of wine, followed by Creme Brulee or Macadamia Nut Brownie.
The "Minnow's Menu" looked like a typical Captain D's menu. Popcorn shrimp & Fries, Chicken Nuggets, breaded and deepfried something or other...which probably all taste the same.

Do people who go out for $22 slabs of fish and $25 bottles of wine that you can get in Target for $7 really take their kids with them when they go out to dine? I'm thinking not. I'm betting the restaurant has a stash of Kraft EasyMac on hand in the off chance that someone couldn't find a babysitter on date night. I'm surprised they don't have corndogs with yellow mustard on the kids' menu, although it would be hard to justify the price even though it comes with a beverage.

Try to keep up.
Gosh, what mean things can I say tonight? I'm in a fairly agreeable mood tonight. I had a perfect White Russian while watching NCIS and House. It just doesn't get any better than that.
The day was gorgeous. I went over to Regina's to pick up the last couple of yards of fabric that need cutting and I dropped off what I broke my back cutting the other day.
I happened upon a book sale at the library and got some great buys. I got a flylady book for 25¢. My Myth Busters DVD finally came in.
I was able to sit out in the sun for a little while and get a dose of vitamin D.
I made a fantastic supper for my fam. It all came out perfectly and at the same time.
I picked up a great little cd at Target for a buck.
I kicked ass on MahJongg Connect at Square Peg Mama. Level 4!
I caught my dd doing a math practice sheet in bed. I'm so proud of her!

Ahhh, the ambien is kicking in...
Some days are positively shitty for me. I feel so much pressure bearing down on me and yet I shouldn't. I've got the perfect life except I'm alone all the time. The cats are great for alleviating the loneliness but they aren't the conversationalists that Goliath was. That cat could talk a blue streak and always made a solid point. I miss him. The stream of consciousness thing just doesn't work with these guys. How am I ever going to nail down perpetual motion if I don't have someone to bounce it off of? These guys aren't satisfied with watching the gyroscopes...they have to bat them around. It makes the thought process rather disjointed. Some days I think it would just be easier to breed a giant hamster and set it loose in a wheel. Of course, the cats would love that.

Other days, like today, are brilliant. I visit my blog and wonder why on earth people who showed absolutely no interest in me at all for years have suddenly made it a habit to visit 2 or 3 times a day. I don't get it. They made their choice and elbowed me out. Why hang around? Waiting to see if I'll pull a Tiffril and blab my guts out? Oh, that's a possibility, you know, on those days that aren't so brilliant. Those days when I'm so lonely. But not today.

OMFG. I'm not a religious person at all but this still just has me shaking my head. Why be so crude? Why not show a little respect for those who are religious? Hell's Bells, if you hang with the religious peeps then you should at least try to take their beliefs into consideration. Get a clue. If your bestest buds can't even type out God without inserting a hyphen then you can bet your ass they won't want to spell out OMFG in their head. Although I do recall one of the more vocal "Christians" at MD using that same acronym quite often. That would seem worse than actually typing out God imo. I guess one woman's blasphemy is another woman's attempt at being hip and cool.

And the overall use of the word CUNT that has become the new 'in' name to sling around...zoiks. A few years from now when some of those women's kids are surfing the web, it is inevitable that one is going to run across something their mom wrote way back when. I can see it now. "Wow, mom called that other woman a Cuntastic Bitch! I can't wait to use that one!" Makes me rather proud to be a prude. I've had my moments but it's really not in my nature to get that crude. If that's the caliber of the folks running the show now, I guess I should be glad I'm not associated with them anymore. Being more hardcore than Sybermoms was not one of the things we were shooting for when we created MD.

For Brownie Scout mother of the year. I just spent over four back-breaking hours bent over the table cutting several yards of fabric into 3 X 3 inch squares. Part of that time was ironing it, part of it was trying to figure out how in hell I was supposed to get anything decent out of the scraps one mom sent me. I need to pick up a couple more yards to cut up from the troop leader tomorrow. My cutting mat is getting shredded. My rotary blade is shot. I already spent an hour and a half cutting during the last meeting. Ugh!
So, as a reward I just added approximately 3 lbs to my backside via a slice of cake with inch deep tooth crackingly sweet icing.

I made bread today. I made breadsticks last Thursday and they turned out so tasty I thought I'd make a couple loaves of something today. So I did. Rosemary & Thyme round bread. I screwed up the first loaf by trying to transfer it from the cookie sheet to the baking stone. It deflated rather unceremoniously like the wicked witch in Wizard of Oz. I had to let it rise for another 30 minutes but it still came out homely. The second loaf came out picture perfect. We've already eaten half of the ugly loaf and it is terrific. It's got a thick chewy crust due to the pan of water that I put in the oven while it was baking. The flavour and texture are wonderful. I am very pleased with myself...well, I did have my dd's help. She enjoyed it, too.

While the dough was rising we got together to read The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base. We had a lot of fun cracking the codes and deciphering the hieroglyphs. It's an excellent read...great for snuggling up in a big chair. I hope the author's other books are as equally clever.

Time to turn in...I'm starting to see double. It just makes me think I have twice as much dust and dirt in this house. Hey, when I close my eyes I don't see any of it at all. Maybe I've hit on something there.

-ay, there's the rub

I look forward to sleep now. I yearn for it where I used to shun it. Once I had my shower this evening all I could think of was crawling into bed and shutting everything out for a few hours. Shutting out the utter nothingness. To escape time.

God I'm depressed. I haven't been this depressed in years. I guess the last time was in Roanoke when I had no friends, a shitty job in a forklift garage, and a recovering alcoholic "fiance" who cheated on me regularly. Ahh, the 80s. What a decade that was.

I'm hoping it's just the holidays and their transient dose of reality that's got me seeking solace in Ambien rather than a more permanent feeling of isolation. But with this early onset it doesn't bode well. I feel like I'm getting paler and paler and by Christmas I will have vanished completely. I feel like a ghost already. I slip so easily from view as though I were never there. Out of sight, out of mind. I am that weird feeling you get when you walk into a room and can't remember what you went in there for. The thought was there a second ago but now it's completely gone. Must not have been too important you say and walk back out of the room.

I can feel it shrinking every time I sit down to another game of letterlinker or mahjongg. Maybe dropping a juicy little drama bomb will spark some activity...

Well, all drama aside, my day was excruciatingly mundane. I had a little heated exchange with my mother, whose memory is apparently shorter than mine, or, at the very least, painted with a different brush. One that is much more forgiving. She whipped out the grudge card and gave me a wicked paper cut with it. That's ok. I heal quickly these days. Ahhh, Thanksgiving...the holiday known for Roasted Turkey, taters & gravy, cranberries, and the annual exequy where my flaws are trotted out like the proverbial dead horse to be whaled on once again. Dh is so looking forward to it.

I went to School Crossings to get the rest of dd's brownie stuff. We finally got her troop numbers so I picked up the rest of the patches needed for her uniform. I actually put them on the vest today, too! How's that for productive? I need to make the rolls for the soiree on Thursday. Guess I better do that tomorrow. Dh is already complaining because it threatens to cut into his Survivor time.

Went to the grocery store after that. Got some "cheap" milk. Finally found the note I scrawled about the milk shares. It's a great concept and I would love to partake but dh is unwilling. But it's Jersey milk, I cried! You haven't tasted milk until you've tasted Jersey milk! He was unimpressed with my show of emotion. My butter churn is ready to go! Rich, creamy, raw Jersey milk...a controlled substance like any narcotic, illegal to sell but free to use if you own the cow...or a portion thereof. Deucedly clever those dairy farmers.

See, if my brain wasn't so busy going numb I would have thought of that. So, as I was saying

Throughout the day I will feel compelled to look at my watch, the stove clock, the microwave... Nine times out of ten the time appearing will be a multiple. Like 1:11, 5:55, 11:11. I don't know why. I'm not a time oriented person. It just doesn't mean anything to me. It slips away so easily. It comes, robs me of my brain cells, and then leaves again.

This morning I lay in bed just letting my mind wander to all sorts of places, scenarios playing out wildly. I had no reason to get up so I didn't. I wallowed in the vacuum. Time didn't exist. But, of course, it did and I want those moments back but they're gone.

For dh, time is a shackle. He's a slave to the clock. He watches time slip away and, much like nature, abhors a vacuum. As long as he is conscious he feels the need to fill his time productively. However, productivity is a largely personal definition. Reading a book in front of the television is not productive to me. Nor is doing a crossword while drinking a beer outside beside the firepit. Adding a row of tiles to the shower...now, that's productive. Building a structure to house the garbage can and recycling containers...productive. Washing the dishes, laundry...productive but mind numbing.

So, today I am boycotting time and the productive use of it. Let it go, I don't care. I'm going to wallow in my vacuum for a while today. There will be time enough to push the real vacuum tomorrow.

Ugly goes right to the bone.

My old online "friends" were discussing a member's appearance one day. I don't remember who. I didn't engage in the thread. It seems she had a mouth full of stained teeth. I guess she posted in one of the mama pic threads. The girls were very judgemental with some 5th grade "EWWWWs" thrown in for good measure. There may have even been used the puking icon. I really thought they felt they were actually better than the poor mama with the stained teeth.

Well, it embarrassed me. Made me feel very self conscious. I didn't let on but, yeah, it hurt. I was suddenly glad I didn't post pics of myself very often. I've got stained teeth. Exterior bleaching will not work. The tooth is dead. Root canal has turned it into a brownish gray tooth. They would need to open the tooth, scrape out the insides and then bleach the shit out of it and then pack it with something. It would have to be done every year.
The other alternative is to grind the tooth down to a nub and put a porceline crown over it. Like all the other porceline crowns I have. I just had one put in today. I think that brings the total up to 9 crowns. $500 per crown plus $300 to prepare the tooth.
$7,200 so far and I'm scheduled for two more. I'm thinking about getting lumineers for those two but I think the cheapest is $600 per tooth with a 4 tooth minimum.

I'm a smiler. All the time for no apparent reason. Maybe that's why people walk away. Or maybe it's my nasty stained teeth...you know...because I'm classless and all.

I was so upset last night. I just don't know where to start. I'll just say to the admins who come here on a daily basis...you should be ashamed of yourselves. I know you've been passing around links to my blog via PM. I also think it's really shitty that you couldn't scrape up two kind words about my dad's situation. That's very Stacy Wheelerish. But what really pisses me off is how you have let MD regress back to the April and Tiffany show. It was very evident last night.

I kept thinking it was very much like AW when the mods would make fun of us when we tried to question "authority". But there was something else there that I couldn't quite put my finger on. My God, how bitchy and snotty can you possibly be? You've got your tight little amityesque clique wrapped around you and it's affecting your personalities. This is the same clique that was forming around "Meo" when she was on the Kelly/Calimafia rampage...the ones who hand fed her information and she lapped it up like it was life sustaining manna from heaven. It didn't matter that the information was gossip...it became gospel.

Wonder where all the old timers have gone? They recognized what was happening to MD and said piss on it. Cripes. You guys used to say how all the grab ass/lesbo/titty talk made you sick to your stomach. Now you're engaging in it? Talk about lemmings.

I usually don't get so personal but I worked hard on that site for years and you guys have destroyed it in a matter of weeks. I've had lots of time to reflect. I'd advise you guys to do the same. Your two-faced scripture-spewing hypocrisy is showing.

I haven't broken down in a weepy heap in a long time. Today it just snuck up on me and clobbered me.

My friend Jen (aka Apathy) left a comment on my MySpace page. I hardly ever go there anymore...I just don't think of it. I logged in to check it out. I noticed that Becki had left a comment in August. I linked on her name and saw a familiar face among her friends list. Patsy. I linked to her site half expecting it to be gone but there it was. Some song was playing. I don't know what it was. I think her last post was "cancer sucks". I lost it. I couldn't help it. It's so unfair that she died. I couldn't stop the tears. We weren't really close. I wouldn't even go so far as to say we were friends...merely acquaintances on the www. But her illness and how she handled it touched me deeply. I always liked Patsy. She was a genuinely nice person thru and thru. I miss her presence.

It hit me again during this evening's episode of Desperate Housewives. The character Lynette has cancer. While awaiting the results of her last PET scan, she transfers her anxiety and fear onto an opossum who has taken up residence in her garden. She wants so desperately to kill the vermin that has entered their lives. When she learns the news that she is cancer free she walks outside and sees the crumpled body of the opossum and collapses in tears of guilt. I lost it for the second time.

Maybe I'm still hanging onto feelings from my Dad's recent bout with colon cancer. I don't know. Maybe I'm having a harder time dealing with it than I thought.

and I'm already trying to find something else to do other than write. Sad. I added another row of tiles to the shower wall. One already popped off. That does not bode well. So, I could be doing that.

I need to take a movie back to the library as it is past due and I already owe a fine on it. I've had it two weeks, renewed it once, and still haven't watched it. That happened with the last movie as well. I just feel so guilty sitting down during the day to watch a movie while dh is at work. Not that he pulls a plow or anything but still...

This NaNoWriMo thing is really bugging me. I've got it all in my head and I know what I want to say but I just don't know how to say it. I mean in what format. First person? Third person? Linear? Divided into years or characters? I know I should have had this worked out by now, especially before today but the muse has left me stranded. She's probably lying in bed, belly distended from one too many tootsie roll candies from last night's wild Halloween induced sugar binge. I hope the bitch gains five pounds. All on her ass. (...she says, as she slurps casually on a year old Valentine DumDum lollipop, so old the wrapper has become imbedded in it.)

Must find a new muse.

I just got done listening to a radio interview with A. J. Jacobs. He was fascinating and funny and so I naturally googled him and read some of his blog. I can't wait to read his new book, The Year of Living Biblically. (If I knew how to underline the title I would.)
He sounds like a more feminine David Spade so he has that going for him as well.

The concept of devoting an entire year to an experiment in order to write about it is so foreign to me. I'd love to be able to commit to something like that but if I could condense it into a week it still probably wouldn't be doable for me. Guess that's why I'll never be a serious writer. I can barely commit to this blog. I don't have a problem with committing. I did commit several years to admining Mama-Drama but that was only because I thought I was needed and respected by my fellow admin. In retrospect I should have realized, from past experience, that that was not the case. I was merely "convenient" like certain mods are now. They'll see how important they really are once they are no longer needed, like Andrea.

Hey, maybe I should write a book about the social tapestry of online mama communities and the eat or get eaten mentality that permeates the bid for acceptance and popularity therein. Hmmmmm. They'll never make a movie about it but it's got all the gratuitous sex and violence needed for what passes as entertainment these days. Pole dancing, extramarital relations, domestic violence, divorce, poverty and a soupcon of Pseudo-Christian ethics thrown in for credibility. LOL, NaNoWriMo is write around the corner.

I totally zoned out today. Soccer was cancelled. They closed the fields because of the rain over the past couple of days. Dh let me sleep in. I missed the ghost stories at Magnolia Grange. I completely forgot about the writers' group meeting. The group leader was supposed to send me an email with information about get-togethers and word count conference calls but he never did. I feel bad about missing it today. I spend a lot of time outside the loop these days.

I spent the whole day thinking it was Sunday.
Yesterday was dh's day off. He let me sleep in and got dd off to school. Then he took off to go do some handyman stuff for his friend from work. Just a typical day for me. Laundry. Dishes. Vacuum.

It's all so mind numbingly depressing. I don't have MD to occupy my time anymore. I feel like a newb there now anyway. Not much happening at SquarePeg. I'm frustrated that I can't get my ftp programs to work worth a damn. My computer keeps freezing up, as usual, and I can't get anything done. Just like when I would try to be in chat or IM, all of my windows would close and I'd get thrown back to my desktop where I'd have to reopen the browser and start all over again. A real PITA. Yesterday I was in ftp and I got stuck there. Couldn't disconnect at all.

It very nearly brings me to tears sometimes. I miss being a part of something. Every day is just like the last.

List ten activities that you would enjoy but tell yourself you have no time for.

1. Sewing
2. Quilting
3. Painting
4. Hypertufa
5. Copper sculpting
6. Soapmaking
7. Baking artisan bread
8. Journal making
9. Learning another language
10. Going back to school

Now I'm supposed to pick one and do it. Riiiight.

* The Sound of Paper: Starting from Scratch by Julia Cameron

I'm loving the sound of the rolling thunder and the steady static sound of rain on the roof. It's like music to my ears tonight. I was able to empty one of the rain barrels earlier today, transferring the water to any bucket I could find. I just looked outside and it's overflowing again and the goldfish pond is full. That'll keep my plants going for another month if it doesn't rain again soon.
Poor Rocky is huddled outside on the fence. Usually she goes in the coop when it's raining but decided against it tonight for some reason. The dogs are in the barn and all the cats are in the house except Nibble and Pip. Orville was in the house but wanted to go outside so he could sit on the window sill and look in. Beats me.

I've taken my pharmaceutical quota for the night and I'm just waiting for dh to fall asleep. He's watching Cash Cab right now and is uncharacteristically lucid for this late hour.
I've got a sinus headache which is affecting my teeth. I should double up on my antihistamines because my ears are bothering me as well. Unfortunately I have to go out tomorrow morning and I would be a zombie.

I've got a lot coming up. Girl Scouts tomorrow and I still have to put patches on dd's uniform, the writers' group on Saturday and I still don't have the story finished for the anthology, and a Halloween party on Sunday and I don't have dd's costume finished yet. Dd swallowed a tooth the other day and the tooth fairy hasn't caught wind of it yet.

When it rains, it pours. ;o)

Bed felt so good this morning. The sheets were so smooth and just the right temperature. I could hear dh and dd slamming around at the other end of the house, then the cats started crying to get their brekkie, and then Blondie started howling because there was a siren going off a couple miles down the road. *sigh* I think I could have slept until noon. BUT. We had to get to the soccer fields to get the team picture taken and you have to get there early if you want a parking spot somewhere in this county. Traffic was a bitch because of the airshow and the special golf olympics and whatever else was happening in the park. Coach was late and the photo wasn't taken until just a few minutes before their game was due to start.

The game itself was a real nail biter. 3 to 2. Our team barely pulled it off this time. Our kids usually trounce the hell out of the other players so much so that the coach has to tell them to stop making goals. Dd made a beautiful goal today. It was perfection. Keegan made the other two. We used to stick around after games last year just to watch him play and luckily he's on our team this year. He's a real sweet kid.

We went out to eat after the game and then came home. I had to do some laundry, pack up some stuff for goodwill, and after a very close cardgame with dh I transferred some tadpoles to an indoor tank so we could monitor their growth. It's rather late in the season and they've just begun to sprout back legs. It'll probably be a couple more weeks until they have front legs and then it would be too late for them to survive the winter. Last year we had the perfect setup for them complete with mosquitoes to eat. We also needed to do some testing on the water heater as it hasn't been heating the water very well lately. The elements and thermostat checked out so I don't know what the problem is. I'd like to switch to a tankless heating system but dh isn't keen on the idea.

I've still got some laundry to do, dinner to make, some tinkering to do at the board , and a few other odd bits until I can settle down to Eastenders tonight. I bet the bed is going to feel really good.

My earliest memory is also my most horrific. I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5. I clearly remember my first day of kindergarten and this was well before then. I remember nothing leading up to it but it still haunts me in nightmares to this day.
I loved my room back then, with its tiny pink rosebuds trailing up and down the pale wallpaper. The antique handhooked rug was a constant source of amusement. A small vermilion stain reminded me never to leave my crayons out near the heating vent. Sadly the rug was left behind when I bugged out of an abusive relationship 20 odd years later. My bed hugged the far corner of the room. Near it's foot sat my little dress up table. My dad built it along with the little white stool. It's forty years later and I still have it. The stool as well. The mirror, with globe lights surrounding it, is long gone. I see it often in my dreams though.
Reflected in the dreadful mirror was a window. Soft white ruffly curtains framed it. They were drawn back with a pink ribbon. I could see the woods beyond it and the jagged slash of raw earth that lay open in the backyard. The roots of trees and bushes stuck out like exposed bones. It wasn't so bad outside, in the sun, but in the mirror...it was always cold and dim.

to be continued....

I slept fairly late today. Doesn't mean much since I didn't get to sleep until after 3 a.m. I didn't want to take an Ambien since I had no desire to hobnob with the shadow people. Even so, I was able to finish nearly everything that was on my ToDo list today. Well, with a little help from the dh. The only things I didn't get to were adding the hack to Square Peg and making a couple loaves of banana bread. The bananas are beyond ripe. We're talking the liquid stage. Just the other side of perfect for my taste. But they'll make an outstanding loaf.

I was finally able to clean the aquarium and set it up for dd's new fish. I had promised her about a month ago but serious life got in the way and we just got around to it. She chose 3 Sunset Fire Platys (or something like that) and a pair of Bettas...male and female named Max and Ruby. The Pleico is unimpressed with the new rocks and the nifty little sculpture or the new neighbours. He's probably not to happy about the clean aquarium either since he eats algae scum. I'd put him in the goldfish pond if I thought he'd survive the winter. He's a big fish now.

Dh's aunt was admitted to the hospital for ovarian cancer this weekend. Hopefully dh called to find out how her surgery went while dd and I were out in search of vampire teeth this afternoon. Her sister died of cancer a few years ago and I'm sure she's afraid she is headed toward the same fate.

Dh cooked/burned hotdogs out on the grill this afternoon. The last hurrah of summer I guess. It was nice. I loaded mine down with horseradish as always and never broke a sweat. I guess it's time I dug up some roots and ground up my own. Dd knocked two dogs back. I don't know where that kid puts it. 3 months shy of 8yo and 52 lbs. She barely casts a shadow and yet she can pack away the food like a field hand. The other day dh went cycling up in DC and didn't get back until late. Dd and I decided to kick back and have tv dinners. I fixed her a Hungry Man....over a pound of food. Two salisbury steaks, mashed potatoes and gravy, stringbeans, and a brownie. All gone. She's always hungry. It's a good thing she cares about nutrition or we'd be in trouble.

That's all the drama for today.

So, I thought I had convinced Mom that they needed to do away with heating with wood and switch to oil. Afterall, Dad isn't supposed to lift anything over 15 lbs for about 6 to 8 weeks due to his surgery. That would put them in the neighbourhood of the first week of December. They will definitely need heat before then. They don't have electric baseboard heat downstairs. They heat with a wood burning stove that is outside in a small barn. The stove heats water which is circulated throughout the house by cast iron radiators. The "pig" in the bathroom isn't even hooked up.

Mom has never taken care of the wood stove before. She told me that she would be able to manage. Brother Bob would be splitting the wood for her. Well, when Brother Mike drove down from PA to cut some trees, Brother Bob was supposed to help but was too tired to do so. The wood laid around the whole week I was down there while Dad was in the hospital. Brother Bob never showed up. But both Mom and Dad feel they can rely on Brother Bob to step up to the plate.

Brother Mike is driving down from PA again this Saturday. He has a bad back and needs chiropractic care on a regular basis. Brother Bob won't be able to help him with the wood this weekend either because apparently he tripped over one of his cats and broke his collar bone. He probably flew off in a rage and killed the cat, too. That's just the kind of guy he is. Anyway, Mom can't lift the wood, can't split the wood, and neither can Dad. But he will. Because he'll have to. Mom is now saying that he can't lift anything over 15 lbs for 3 weeks. I specifically heard the surgeon say 6 to 8 weeks. Several times.

So, Mom was ready to order the oil. Dad always said the furnace worked but it just needed to be hooked up. Well, hook it up then. Uh. No. That's no good because the chimney is bad he says. WTF? The wood stove is very big and the logs need to be big as well so they'll burn a long time. They just are not capable right now. But you can bet your ass that Dad will be out there doing it so Mom won't have to. 84 years old and just had bowel resection to remove cancer. Yesterday he got his staples out and the surgeon said there was still cancer present.

There's no reason for this shit. Honestly.