Do Not Adjust Your Monitor

Our cat is really pink. At first just his head was pink because Lauren colored him with sidewalk chalk, but then he must have gone outside and rolled around where they had colored because now he's ALL pink. And it's not coming off very well. I think his fur is dyed. Eva told me not to worry about it because Jesus would take care of it. She pulls out Jesus at the oddest moments.


I got this cute little picture of Lauren and Maria. They were hugging each other and telling each other that they were Best Friends. They're all about Best Friends and whether or not they are are are not someone's Best Friend. I thought this would be a good picture to save and show them when they're teenagers and hate each other.

I finished my punchneedle project finally. And I got my first mail art. Thanks Marjean! And my Stitcher's Lane RR made it back. I need to stitch my house and then I'm going to do a border.

When the Saints Come Marching In

So, if you didn't know, there was a little football game last night down the river. Could you NOT know? LOL I was pretty shocked. The Saints actually looked like a real live professional football team. However, conspiracy theories are abounding that the game was rigged so the Saints would win. And I admit, before the game started, I asked James if he though the Falcons would throw the game. He said no way. Then at that first blocked punt, I asked him if he still thought that. I really kind of thought it was going on. I mean really, can you imagine what a crushing blow it would have been for the Saints to lose that game? On the other hand, I have a deep, deep respect and adoration for Warrick Dunn and I can't imagine him being compliant with any sort of cheating or game throwing, but you know I'm biased there. I do agree though that Atlanta was probably just completely unprepared for the level of emotion in the stadium. I don't know. I guess I could go either way on it. I really do want to the Saints to do well, I'd love for them to actually be in the playoffs. How great would that be? And as much as I hate hate hate USC (ha ha!) I thank them for Reggie Bush.

(Ha ha, this guy just called in and said that Bill Clinton put in the call for the Saints to win, so that people would talk about the Saints and not his meltdown on Fox)

Oh, and the other thing I couldn't stop thinking about during the game was Jim Mora's unnaturally smooth skin. He almost didn't look real.

Weekend Update

Nothing too exciting happened. Just the same ole same ole. Eva did throw me a birthday party though. My mom took her shopping and Eva picked out all the decorations and party supplies. She also picked out the cake, The Little Mermaid. My mom said that Eva told her that I said I really wanted an Ariel cake. It was cute.

I stitched the Sweetheart Tree Joy ornament out of the 2006 Ornament Issue. It only took a couple of hours total. I started it Sunday afternoon and finished it Sunday night. There was a nap, supper and laundry thrown in between then too. I'm debating how to finish it. I think I might do that whipstitched backstitch thing, because I'm not even going to attempt to sew something that small. I've got the Christmas stitching bug now. I pulled out all my old ornament issues and a couple of small patterns to think about.

There's a State wide vote Saturday. I'm very decided on the Commissioner of Insurance election. I'm going with the Libertarian candidate. The other two candidates (both Republicans) are both entrenched Louisiana politicians both are accusing each other of being crooks, so I'm going to go on the assumption that they both are. Practically all the Commissioners of Insurance go to prison in this state for being crooks and theives. So, I'm going with the unknown. From his resume, it looks like he's the only one with any insurance experience anyway, and he was an interpreter for the Department of Defense, so I imagine he probably had to go through some serious scrutiny to get that job since he's Syrian born. The other Election is for Secretary of State. I don't know how to vote there. My gut goes with one particular candidate, but he's another entrenched politician. However, I've met him on several occasions and I didn't necessarily get bad vibes from him.

Also on the political front, my husband has committed blasphemy. I got a "Don't Blame Me I Voted for Jindal" bumper sticker in the mail. He was Gov. Blanco's opposition in the last election. Anyway, he scratched out Jindal and wrote Kerry. The horror!

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday morning it was 55 degrees and very low humidity. This morning it was 80 and like a steamroom. You could feel it yesterday when the winds shifted around from the north to the south. It's supposed to be stormy all weekend.

No matter, LSU is going to crush Tulane. My Mirabilia RR finally made it back into trustworthy hands. My Stitcher's Lane RR finally made it back home. My parents are taking me out to dinner tonight. My mom and I ran errands yesterday and we ended up getting dinner out last night too. Two nights of no cooking!! My grandmother took me shopping yesterday and I got three pairs of jeans (a size smaller!), a causal outfit and a dressy outfit. TV finally doesn't suck anymore. Tomorrow is my birthday. Can life just get any better than that?

Yesterday I watched a cute little movie. It was called Southern Belles. It had Alex from Gray's Anatomy playing a police officer in modern day Georgia named Rhett Butler. There was a scene where this little kid walked up to him and asked his name, he said "Rhett Butler, what's your's?" The boy answered, "Atticus" LOL And he was dressed just like Dill. I thought it was so funny.

Double Dose of Slater

He wasn't on just once last night on Dancing With the Stars, he was on Nip/Tuck last night too. Nekkid no less! I think he looks better with clothes on. I wonder if his character is a one time thing or what.

Not much going on. Lauren and Maria had their first dental appointment today. It went well. No problems. I thought he might fuss about them still having their noo noos, but he didn't, he just wants them to use a different kind. It was funny because he looked at Maria first and then when he looked at Lauren he told the nurse to write all the same things because they were exactly alike.

That's about it for today!

2-0??

That can't be the Saints record so far? Winning two games? In a row? I have to say it was a pretty good game too. I don't have anything to say about the LSU game. The officiating seemed a little unfair. The announcers seemed a little biased. Ok, nothing else to say. Zip! The team did play hard and just came up short. Ok, I'll stop. LOL

Didn't do much else. I worked on a punchneedle kit that Stasha RAK'd me with a while back. It's turning out cute. I can't do it for very long because it makes my hand hurt after awhile. I'd say I'm about half done with it. I think if I work on it a little bit every night I could probably finish it this week. I continued on with the never ending vines on my Sweetheart Tree RR. I'm so ready for it to start. And I worked on Wendy's Foldable Book RR. I'll have the front cover finished this week I think. Then I'll pick one of the inside pieces to stitch.

Eva had her first day of Sunday School yesterday. I think she enjoyed it. Then Lauren, Maria and I went to church. They didn't behave as badly as I anticipated, but I kept feeling like the Mass was running really long. When I got out, I ran into one of my co-nursery workers who had a watch it had run nearly an hour and a half and we skipped out after communion. Annmarie...remember Father Reagan who had Mass over in like a half hour? Of course, there weren't nearly as many people to run through the communion line. One time they said that there are approximately 900 people at the 9:30 Mass on average. Anyway, Mass running long, Father Eric started out his homily about addiction which was you know normal, then he got on this tangent about some book he read about a priest in a prison camp in Siberia, and he kept going on and on about the book and never said the name of the book.

There was this dad with a newborn baby at church and the poor baby was screaming it's head off for at least 10-15 minutes and he couldn't do anything to console it really. Then finally the mom comes in the crying room with a bottle and they try to feed the poor thing. It started screaming even more. I wanted to tell them to get that baby some Mylicon and take it for a car ride that God would forgive them for leaving early, but you know, you can't tell other parents what to do with their kids. The baby did eventually fall asleep, I think from sheer exhaustion. Then a new thing started, there were like 3 moms in there with little babies and the moms were bouncing them around, but they were like REALLY bouncing them, I'm sitting there like what the heck, have you people heard of shaken baby syndrome, and the moms are getting frustrated because the babies won't stop crying, well duh, they're probably trying not to throw up. Now Lauren and Maria thought it was highly amusing, they kept going "shake me, shake me" LOL Anyway, I guess it's times like that that I feel a lot more confident in my parenting skills. Well, at least my comforting skills.

A Weight Lifted

I've finally made the decision public that I'm ready to hand over the ownership of the JPC board to someone else. I've been thinking about it and looking for alternatives for like a year, but nothing was really working out. So I offered it up to the participants on the board. I've been really nervous about this, but now I feel pretty content with the decision. Hopefully, it'll all work out nicely.

I've felt myself being drawn away from the stitching boards a lot. Not for any one particular reason, mainly just avoiding temptation of wanting to buy stuff. Truth be told, they've all slowed way down, so there's not much holding my interest. A board owner/administrator who has lost interest in their board and doesn't keep up with it drives me crazy and I don't want to be one of those people. Plus, I've been trying to foster more "real life" relationships (that sounds terrible to my online friends because they're real people and real friends, but you know what I mean). So once I get home, we're pretty much out in the neighborhood until it's time for the kids to go to bed. From that point on, that's my time, and I'd rather spend it stitching than checking the boards.

I'll still be around the online stitching community. I still like to lurk and offer tips here and there. And I'm addicted to Round Robins so I have to stick around for those!

Feeling Better

That prednisone works really well, unfortunately it makes my face really red, so I look a little silly right now. I can breathe clearly now and I'm just a little stuffy. James is sick now or he says he is, he's a wicked hypochodriac sometimes.

I was really proud of Eva yesterday. I asked her teacher if there was anything in particular that she thought we needed to work on at home. She told me that Eva and one other boy are far more advanced than everyone else in the class, and that there were some things that involved certain concepts and she's the only person in the class that understands it. Then after school we went to the library and one of the other teachers was there and she told me that Eva is really well behaved at school and that she was very quiet. Unfortunately, I think she gets all her loudness out at home. Not just typical little kid fooling around, but she talks really loud sometimes. Then, if that wasn't good enough, she cleaned the living room last night without me asking. So she got some quarters for her piggy bank.

Lauren and Maria are doing great. Their conversation skills have picked up a lot over the last couple of weeks. I think it's so funny to listen to them have a conversation together. The other day they were talking about the bo-bos they had and how they'd have to wait and get bandaids from Nana's house. Now mind you, that these were like ant bites from 3 days before so they were practically healed. They're obsessed with bandaids and I'm just not a big bandaid person. Unless it's dripping blood, I don't think you need a bandaid for it, but Nana indulges their bandaid love.

Ok Nip/Tuck fans, am I the only one that's really not liking the gay Christian thing? And I thought the Scientology thing with Matt was pretty amusing. I figured it was going to be some sort of cult that he was getting in to, but Scientology was a cute little twist.

And we watched Dancing with the Stars last night...guilty pleasure. That AC Slater is looking pretty good, I thought that was pretty cute how nervous he was. Jerry Springer, I don't know, that's sort of weird. Joey Lawrence looks weird with no hair.

Ok, gotta run!

Grrr...I'm sick

Against my better judgement I went to the doctor today and it's a virus so there's nothing to do about it. I'm all congested and I can hardly breathe. I had some prednisone at home and debated about taking it, but figured I better not with out some medical advice first. But I did take Mucinex. So, what does the doctor tell me? Take prednisone and Mucinex. Although he did give me a prescription for a rescue inhaler, which I could have really used last night. So all afternoon I've been sweating buckets. It's about 65 degrees in the house and I'm still sitting here soaking wet, it's disgusting. I guess it's a good thing though right? Sweating out all the bad stuff right?

File Under:

Things I never thought I'd say with out screaming and jumping around like a girl: "Watch out, you're about to step on a snake"


Yes, that's a frog in it's mouth and it was still alive. That little guy was in our yard this weekend. A boy from down the street came over and took the frog away from it. Then the lady across the street came over and asked if she could have it to put in her garden. I told her she was more than welcome to it.

So my birthday is coming up

Every year I try not to get too excited about it, because I always get pretty much the same stuff. I guess I still have that childish expectation that I'm going to get something fabulous. I always get money from my grandparents, money from my parents and something from James, usually money too. (Family take note!) However, since I can't spend any money on cross stitch stash, I've tried to make it clear that if they intend for me to spend my money on that then they need to get me gift certificates (SB&B or SW), or buy the stuff I want for me. I've had a wish list on the fridge for a few days now, no one has commented on it, so I don't know if it's been noticed or not.

Other than stitching stuff, there's usually not a whole lot else that I ever want. I found that really changed once I had kids. I used to want bath stuff, well, I hardly ever get to stay in the bath for very long anymore, so it'd just be a waste to use any good stuff. And shoes, I love shoes, but my feet got wide when I was pregnant and cute shoes just don't fit anymore. And clothes, well, lets just not even go there. Then of course there's all that stuff that I want that are really just sort of a waste and there's no point in having now. Like, I want a Nintendo DS so I can play Super Mario Brothers. Or I want a laptop with wireless internet access so I can play on the internet and watch tv at the same time. Or an iPod would be great too. But those are sort of frivilous things that I could never justify.

Anyway, Labor Day weekend was just sort of so-so. We went to a birthday party for some kids that just moved in the neighborhood. We went to my mother in law's house for her birthday. Then after much passive aggressiveness, I left monday afternoon to visit a friend of mine for awhile. Of course, my mom and my aunt show up while I'm gone and James is Dad of the Year again, cooking, cleaning and watching the kids while I'm off screwing around.

The dad of the kids that we went to the birthday for has been really secretive about what he does for a living. He should have just made something up so I wouldn't be so curious. He told us he was a consultant for the government and that he goes overseas often, he made it pretty obvious that he didn't want to tell us, so we didn't press. Then at the party he James he was part of a Special Forces reserve unit. As we were leaving the party he told me he was leaving for Lebanon this week. I asked if he was going as a peacekeeper and he said yes, but he said it in a way that made me think he wasn't really telling the truth about that. So, I just told him that we'd keep an extra eye out on his wife and kids for him and left it at that.

Ah the drama of Henderson Bayou. LOL My life would be so dull without it. Oh and the drama of my stitching group, but I'm still pretty ticked off about it, so I'm not even going to go into it.

Somebody get me a gun

I need to go hunting. They just upped the price per tail for nutria rats. You can get paid $5/tail for killing those nasty things. I know where there's a whole herd of them. FYI, nutria rats are about the size of a small house cat but shorter, sort of like a beaver, but with a skinny tail. They're bad because they eat marsh plants and destroy the marshy areas. There was a big campaign a few years ago to get people to eat them, supposedly they taste ok, but I'm sorry that's just disgusting! Ah, only in South Louisiana

Hmmm...apparently the administration at LSU has changed up some of the songs that the band can play at football games. They can't play Tiger Rag until after half time because the crowd yells explitives at the other team. And they can't play Chinese Bandits because it's derogatory towards Chinese people apparently, and I think the explitive thing comes in on that song too. I can't imagine that it's really going to help. I don't think you can switch up song choice and make a LSU crowd polite company.

I finally watched Mr Smith Goes to Washington yesterday. It was pretty good. I don't know why I put off watching it so long. I'm reading The Rule of Four it's also fairly good, but I keep falling asleep so it's taking awhile. Stitchingwise, I'm working on my Floral RR. I think it's going to come out cute.

Oh lovely, in the wake of Katrina they had a big problem with keeping track of registered sex offenders. So, now they have a plan. If you're a registered sex offender and you have to evacuate, you have to go to a specific place (I think it's that urban warfare training site that I went to a few months ago). That's nice, I feel bad for the people that live around there. Let's just dump a couple hundred sex offenders next door. Surprisingly, no where else would agree to take them. Gee, I wonder why?

I generally don't question other people's parenting skills, but I really have to wonder about my neighbors sometimes. One thing I remember is they were letting their little toddler run around a big bonfire they had started to burn leaves. Then they tear around the neigborhood with their kids on a 3 wheeler, not a 4 wheeler, but a 3 wheeler which has been banned for what like a decade because they're so dangerous? They've gone through 3 dogs at least in the last 2 1/2 years because they keep getting hit by cars. So yesterday we were outside and the mom comes over looking for her daughter who is about 1 1/2. She was playing with the girls, which I didn't even realize because she has blonde curly hair and she just blended in. So they went back home. Then both of their kids came over and like 10 minutes later the dad came over looking for them. They all sort of wandered back home. Then at some point the little girl came back and fell in our ditch. Thank God, I was out there. Now keep in mind her parents are in their front yard, probably closer than I was, but I'm the one that had to go get her out. She's now covered head to toe in MUCK, slimy muck. So, I bring her back home. Her mom doesn't even change her clothes. As I was standing there talking to her, I said half to my girls and half to her (the mom), that it was time to go inside. After a few minutes I get all the girls back inside, and we're starting baths and stuff. Next thing I know, the little girl comes strolling in our house, in her mucky clothes still. So, I bring her back home and tell the mom that we've gone inside for the night. She's just like "ok". She wasn't even looking for the girl! You'd think after all the dogs that have gotten run over that they'd be a little bit more aware of their kids.

Ok, I guess that's about all for today. I'm a little scattered. Can you tell? We have a birthday party to go to tonight. Ugh, these are kids we just met. A three year old girl and a five year old boy, what the heck do you get them?