September...here and almost gone.

I can't believe that half of September is gone already.
How can that be?
I am not done with summer yet!
It's true!
I haven't had enough time with either Cutie Patootie Neve or Mr. B. Kian.
Where have all the days gone?
I didn't even get around to buying or planting any marigolds or snapdragons in my deck planters this year. It has been way too hot to work outside and besides I have been, as always, too tired once I drag my butt home at the end of the day, to do anything more than make supper and sleep. I was only in the pool 2 or maybe 3 times at the most this summer. It has flown by way too fast!
Sigh.......and now it's done and gone and we have moved into autumn. The good thing is, the cooler weather, the lovely fall colours that have already started in our area and the abundance of root veggies. Can you tell that I love squash? Yummy! So hopefully my lagging energy will return and I can get down to some serious blogging and house cleaning. Both have suffered since the spring. The bad thing is that we are getting closer to the snow season. Well, bad if you don't like winter. I don't mind it so it really isn't so bad for me, but like I said, to those who don't like winter the end of summer must really suck!
I am looking forward to the end of September only because we are going camping up in Algonquin Park for a few days. Ahhhh......nothing but trees with pretty leaves and the odd moose (if we are lucky) and cute little chipmunks running here and there.Reading a good book or two and going biking around the nature trails. Nighttime will bring out the raccoons but we have learned from experience to leave nothing outside. Everything gets packed into the back of the van for the night and that discourages those cute little pests from hanging around our camper for too long. Once year Hubby John had a pack of wolves run by him while he was out in the early wee hours of the morning answering natures call. He said it very unnerving and I don't think he cares to repeat that incident again. There is never a dull moment when we go camping that's for sure! We both enjoy it very much and are looking forward to those few days away. But for now the farthest I am going is to the couch in the family room where I plan to lay down and play with my IPad (A gift from HJ. He won it from Giant Tiger. How cool is that?) while HJ and CP watch a Barbie Princess movie. Geese.....I don't know if I can stand this much excitement, at night, at my age. No wonder I'm tired all the time....LOL!

Early Morning Crunchy Bites

It’s 5:00 o’clock on Saturday morning and here I am, wide awake, sitting half naked at this stupid computer while asking myself, “WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER”? All I wanted was a glass of water. At this time of the morning I don’t care if the glass is half full or half empty. As long as it is cold water, I just don’t really care. When I woke up, I must say I was surprised. Pleasantly surprised that is. Yes, it was 5:00 AM but that is better than 3:00 AM which is my usual “wake up in the middle of the night” time. Baby Cat Oscar meowed to question what the heck was going on. Even he knew this was not our middle of the night wake up time. 3:00 AM is the time for us to haul our butts out of bed to go to the bathroom, get a drink of water and get a tiny handful of crunchy bites. Um….let me clarify that statement….the crunchy bites would be for Baby Cat Oscar, not me, and he gets them only if I am awake enough to maneuver the basement stairs and I am not too cranky. Then he gets lucky. Stupid cat.....smart me. I know, I know, you all think Baby Cat Oscar is the smart one because I go to the basement to give him crunchy bites, and that I am some kind of idiot to do that at three AM. You all think that I should just pee, get my drink and then stumble back to bed. And sometimes I do that. BUT sometimes I have flashes of pure genius in the wee hours of the morning and I think to myself……if I give Baby Cat Oscar some crunchy bites now, then he will let me sleep in an extra 10 or 15 minutes in the morning when I hit the pause button on the alarm. Because when that alarm goes off he does not stop…..meow...meow…meow….meow…push paw…push paw…push paw…meow…meow…meow…. and after being told, in a not so nice way, to buzz off….he will find something to make noise with, whether it is the door, the carpet or just purring loud enough to wake the dead. So you see, crunchy bites at 3:00 AM are pure genius for my part. It's sort of like giving a baby an extra ounce or so of milk in the wee hours because you know you’ll reap the rewards later that morning when the baby sleeps in for an extra half hour or so. So I really am one smart crunchy…I mean cookie.
But I digress. So let’s forget about the crunchy bites and I will get back to the clock. It has been, for years, that I wake up at 3:00 AM. I must have had something happen in that time frame,in a previous life, that has scarred my psyche because it is so very rare that I wake up at any other time during the night...um I mean morning.. So, for me, seeing the clock say 5:00 AM instead of 3:00 AM. is quite a pleasant surprise. Sigh….life is so good! Now falling out of bed ….well that was not so pleasant but it’s still all good. I am fine. Nothing got broke and I made it downstairs in one piece. I know I really should put on my nightgown when I go downstairs but who’s going to see me naked? Baby Cat doesn’t mind and if Hubby John saw, I know he wouldn’t mind. And if the neighbors are looking in the window, well I really don’t care if they mind. A bad scare like that would serve them right for looking in my window, wouldn’t it? In the back of my head though, that little voice of reason, and I do mean little, keeps saying over and over….”What would happen if you fell down the stairs hit your head and were unconscious and HJ found you and called an ambulance and they came to take you to the hospital? HJ would not think to put your nightgown on you before he called for help. Strangers would be looking at you….naked at the bottom of the stairs…..How embarrassing would that be??? So when I got downstairs I grabbed a towel and put it around me before I went down the basement stairs to give Baby Cat Oscar some crunchy bites. That explains my half nakedness…one large bath sheet wrapped around me which is making me feel hot….but I think the AC is kicking in so that should help cool things down. As for the water, I grabbed my glass from last night, checked for spiders, took a sip and decided the water was too warm and so I fed it to my spider plant that hangs in the kitchen window. Isn’t that odd? I hate spiders but I do like my spider plant. Huh…go figure. So after the plant, Baby Cat Oscar and I had our water and BCO had his crunchy bites and we both used our own loo’s, we were on our way back to bed when I started having a sneezing attack. Great….just great! I grabbed a handful of tissues, came into the office and started to try to blow my nose quietly so as not to wake up Hubby John. Now I know that that is one of the stupidest things I do….really…..it is! HJ snores so loud that a bomb could go off beside the bed and I swear he wouldn’t hear it. So me sneezing and blowing my nose downstairs in a room on the opposite side of the house from where he is sleeping is not going to wake him up. I know this……but I still go into the office, every time an early morning sneezing attack starts. Just so I don't wake him up. Aren’t I a good and caring wife? Take note HJ….see what I do for you and you don’t even know it. I certainly hope you think of this at anniversary time…hee..hee..hee!
I just now looked at the time and realized I have been drinking, peeing, sneezing, feeding Baby Cat Oscar and typing away for over an hour. Baby Cat Oscar is sleeping and snoring on my feet. So I’ll wake him up and then the two of us are going back to bed. Hopefully I will fall back to sleep….right away. If not I’ll count sheep….or better yet, crunchy bites.

The best part of our summer.

There I go again! Weeks and weeks since my last post! I have not been motivated to turn on the computer to even read my "Blogs that make me go Ohhh!". Well, that’s not quite true....I did sneak on to read a few of them....I'm not saying which ones because it might be taken as showing favoritism and it shouldn't be taken that way. I didn't even leave a comment on the few I quickly read and I hate doing that but I was just too tired to do more than get a quick blog fix. Both Hubby John and myself have been busy....at work and home. But we are still trying to spend time with Cutie-Patootie and Mr. B. as often as possible. Hubby John and I took Cutie Patootie Neve to the beach twice this summer. We had a great time (both times) and played and ate and jumped in the waves. Good memories for us all. Papa (Hubby John) and Grams (that's me) go over to spoil Kian (aka Mr. B.) at least once a week and I know we would both be there every day if we could. He's just so cute and cuddlable (is that a word?). He's only six weeks old but he changes a wee bit every time we see him. So we see him as often as possible without intruding on his mommy and daddy too much. I can hardly wait for sleepovers…..although I know that is a looong way away yet! The summer has flown by so quickly and I did not even go to one garage sale OR to Michael’s. THAT is saying a LOT! I love to do both so it just goes to show how busy I/we have been. Mind you, last Thursday I booked a day off work. HJ was having some dental work done up in E town and I went along for the ride. While there, I managed to get some great deals. E town just happened to have a sidewalk sale and the annual book sale at the local library that day. It was great! I got to spend a hour or so browsing and buying some used books. Then I went into a thrift store that I didn't even know existed, picked up a few things and when I went to pay for them, was told they were all half price. HOW GREAT WAS THAT?!?!?! Needless to say, I was a very happy camper for sure!
HJ and I haven't taken full holidays this summer. I get every other Friday and Monday off so it hasn’t been too bad. Hubby John books his appointments around my time off whenever possible so it’s all good.
I am hoping to maybe get away camping up north this year....in the fall.... Maybe......we'll have to wait and see how the money and work (for HJ) goes. He needs to take work when he can get it. We've had a lot of expenses this year with one thing after another. Now my car is in the shop to replace the door latch assembly on the driver’s door. $700.00 plus dollars for a door handle? I don't think so! That cost was so ridiculous that I told them to find a generic or a used one instead. The generic one does not exist apparently, so I am now waiting for them to procure the used part. Had it been one of the back doors I would have just left it, but crawling through the passenger side and over the gear stick thingy is just too much of a pain.....literally.....Do you know how high you need to lift your legs to do that? Trust me....it's higher than it looks! You need to be double jointed or a Zen yoga master to do that without hurting yourself. I can definitely say that I am not either one of those. LOL!!
Anyway, time just flies too fast at our household. I am hoping that HJ and I will have some down time in these last few weeks before September descends on us. There are thrift stores, garage sales and Michael's stores just waiting for me/us to spend time at. And we both definitely need lots more Cutie-Patootie and Mr. B time too! After all, spending time with those two grand babies is by far the best part of our summer.

Kidnapped

The trouble with getting older is that your brain cells start shrinking and disappearing. When that starts to happen you will find...if you were to look....that your gray matter...no, not your hair... your brain...tends to delegate cell usage to the more important duties that you need to take care of on a more or less daily basis. That is: not drooling while you are eating, where you put your teeth if they aren't in your mouth, breathing, walking and remembering to wake up after you have either intentionally or unintentionally fallen asleep. These things, to the young, are trivial and funny matters. That's OK....let them laugh now....we'll see how much they are laughing in another thirty years or so. Well....that's if we still have eyesight that works....even if it has to be while using a 160 watt light bulb to be able to see what we need to see. HA! You young whippersnappers....just remember....she who laughs last laughs best. The joke will someday be on you!.........oh.....yah.........where was I? OH! I remember!....so with this background intel that I have just given you, I am sure that you will appreciate the statement that keys, can sometimes be left in the lock, of the front door, after you have come home from an evening of shopping. Left there ... all night long... to be discovered when you open the front door the following morning. Hubby John did it....not me. I must say that I trembled a bit when I saw the keys in that door. What if some handsome...rich...really rich... stranger came along and absconded with me during the night? Hubby John would never hear anything. He snores too loud to hear anything once he is asleep. I could have been kidnapped and he wouldn't know I was gone until late morning......or evening.....depending on when he realized I wasn't around, if he did realize I wasn't around. Even then, he would have probably thought I had just gone out thrifting for a few hours. I sometimes think I am too unappreciated. Just think.......I am gone....away from my loving family and dirty house....and nobody suspects anything. SIGH! When I finally walk in through the front door. late at night, after I have wrenched my sobbing person from the handsome, rich.....very rich...absconder and made my way, in the dark, in the pouring rain (Murphy's Law applied here) back to my dirty house and family, HJ would look up from watching Bones or Two and a Half Men on the TV and say, "So....did you get any good deals?
SIGH.......... I am off now......I need to go check and see where HJ left his keys.

How to have a heart attack in the kitchen.

I have always maintained that domestic chores will someday be the death of me. This true story proves my point. This is my way of having a heart attack in the kitchen.
1: Decide, at 8 o'clock in the evening, to make strawberry milkshakes while watching the Canada/Russia hockey game playoff for Team Canada to be able , if they win, to go to the final game for a chance at gold in the 2010 Winter Olympics.
2: Go down to freezer, change the laundry over to the dryer, hang up wet jeans....while checking for sneaky spiders,... then put another load of laundry into the washer, feed baby cat Oscar again, go back to the freezer and get the ice-cream which was your whole point in going downstairs to start with, start up the stairs, go back down and over to the freezer.....again......to turn off the light....yell upstairs to Hubby John who is in the back family room and is yelling something to someone, .... "John if your yelling at me I can't hear you....
John,I Can't Hear You .... JOHNICAN'THEARYOU!!!! ..... get distracted and feed Baby Cat Oscar for the third time this evening.....and then ....finally.... go back up the stairs and into the kitchen.
3: Go to the fridge freezer and get frozen strawberries and ice cubes out and then open the fridge to get milk out and set everything on the counter by the microwave....go back into the fridge to get some strawberry jam and set it on the counter too. Yell back at Hubby John, who is still in the back room, and who is yelling at me or someone else, something about missing the game or the net ...."OK I heard you!" ..... "Yes I Heard You!".... "YESIHEARDYOU!!"
3: Move the blender from the counter by the window to the counter by the microwave because it's easier to move just the blender rather than all the ingredients for the shakes.
4: Double check to make sure you got everything you need and discover the ice-cream scoop is missing. Check out both drawers and find the scoop in the back under a soup ladle. What the heck is it doing there??? Close the drawer and open up ice-cream container and then dump melted ice water out of the bowl.
5: Notice that you haven't plugged in blender.
6: Plug in blender BEFORE you REALIZE the lid and lid plug are inside the glass bowl of the blender and the speed control button is NOT in the OFF position.
7: Jump 4 feet in the air while clutching your chest and saying to Baby Cat Oscar (who has come into the kitchen to see what you're doing), """Cheese on bread.... Oh my god.... !!!!!**&&%%++##@@!!%%$$******" then frantically pull the plug on the blender out of the wall socket while still clutching your chest.
8: Lean against counter with shaky knees, while trying to get your heart beat down to a more reasonable rate so you can take out and check over the lid and plug that you always leave in the blender bowl but usually remove BEFORE you push the speed control button.
9: Rinse the teeny, tiny plastic pieces that got ground off the lid and plug, out of the glass blender bowl, then also rinse the "still-almost-like-new-except-for-a few-nicks", lid and plug.
10. Check to make sure blender is on OFF position, plug in, add milk, mostly melted ice-cream, frozen strawberries, jam and more ice-water than ice-cubes. Put plug in lid and lid on blender and hit the start button.
And there you go! Yummy strawberry milkshakes to sip while watching Canada ....finally.... after 50 years, win over Russia, in the Olympics. Along with one pair of knees that have stopped shaking and one heart that is still going strong despite having a heart attack in the kitchen....life is good.

Just add water.

Last year for Christmas the kids bought Hubby John an electric ice maker that sits on the counter and pops out ice cubes. HJ loves his ice maker and thinks it is one of the best gifts he has ever gotten.
This past Saturday evening we had "our gang" in for our annual Christmas pot-luck and gift exchange. We also had my Cutie-Patootie Neve staying overnight.
As usual the evening ended up with us playing a card game called, Pay Me The Money, It is played with 13 quarters and as many decks of cards that are needed depending on how many persons are playing. Our gang usually uses 3 or 4 decks. There are 11 rounds to the game. You collect runs of the same suite or cards of the same face value. As soon as someone can lay down their whole hand on their turn, they yell, "Pay Me The Money", and the other players give him/her a quarter. The play goes around once more until it gets back to the person who called the hand. They lay their hand on the table and everyone else can lay cards down on the winners pile(s) and in front of themselves as well (but not on any other players piles). You add up any cards that you couldn't play and that score is marked down. At the end of the game the winner with the lowest score gets two quarters from each player. With nine of us playing that made a pot of $4.50.
People always whine when they are playing cards and winning rounds. You would think they would be grateful and say "Thank you, you are too kind." But no.... You should hear them. They are such "Meyer The Criers. You know the type, the ones that whine and complain.....poor me!....what do you mean someone called it?.....give me a break!...you are such a jerk!...I don't care if it's legal tender or not, take back the pennies and give me a quarter...... alright, who tried to pass off a peso?......hey! there are only 8 quarters here who didn't pay?.... NO you can't pay me later!...buzz off and give me my money(or something along those lines depending on who was complaining and whether Cutie-Patootie Neve was within hearing range) The winner of the final pot is very sly and sneaky. They divert every ones attention to someone else...."Oh look at so and so that's the third time they called it!" They do this so that you don't realize how low their score is. You think they are just such a nice person. Then BHAM! They zoom in and hit you right between the eyes....the little sneaks! My baby brother KD won the final pot on Saturday. The little toad! That pot should have been mine and even thought I am older and a little bit slower and fatter now (Who am I kidding? I should say a lot older, fatter and slower.), I probably could still take him if I tried. But it is Christmas and I was the hostess so I let the little wiener have the money.
I am such a good big sister to him. hee....hee...hee...
Anyway, I digress. I was talking about the ice maker. It was chugging away doing its' business when it just stopped. It didn't do nothing. Zero, zilch, Nada. Hmmm.....what could be wrong? HJ and I moved it, unplugged it, plugged in into another outlet and NOTHING......Oh no!...." The lights were on but there was nobody home. "Well maybe it takes a fuse." said Hubby John, "I'll have to look up the instruction book tomorrow".
Now I know that some of you ladies are now gasping for air, so just take slow even breaths until you heart rate settles. Yes, I know, HJ actually said he would read the instruction booklet. But he really loves his ice maker and ya know, sometimes men just have to break down and read the manual rather than just standing there and staring at the broken thingy while holding a screw driver or ice pick in their hand and putting the lid up and down and saying " I wonder what's wrong with it?"
It's OK....are you feeling well enough to read on now?
Good!
Where was I? Oh yes.....the reaction to the broken ice maker.
Awwww......disappointment was all around the table and lasted until we all threw quarters at HJ when he said "Pay me the money!" after just 3 times round the table on the fifth hand. I told him to leave the money that landed on the floor for the sweeper (that would be me) but his partner in crime, my Cutie-Patootie Neve , was his official money picker upper for the evening and made quick work of gathering up stray change. With this game we quite often throw money at HJ or PB and sometimes CD or SD, depending which one of them says "Pay Me The Money" too many times.
So while we continued playing cards, eating and threatening to break fingers and accusing some people of cheating, I eventually got up to make a pot of coffee. I don't usually make the coffee. HJ does. But really, how hard can it be?
The coffee maker was on the counter and I carefully counted the number of spoons of coffee into the filter and hit the MANUAL ON button. NOTHING. Hmmm....did I do something wrong? I hit the button again. NOTHING. I unplugged the machine, plugged it back in and hit the AUTO ON button this time. NOTHING. Oh for Pete's sake! Maybe this explains the ice machine, maybe it is the outlet after all. I move the coffee pot to another counter and plug it in. Still NOTHING. Grrrrr.......I unplug it and try a different plug....and still no success with my endeavor. Just Great! I turn to tell everyone that there will be no coffee,when it hits me......and five minutes later...ta da!....there is a lovely pot of coffee.
What did I do? How did I fix it? Did I read the instruction booklet?
No I didn't read the book.
But did you know that if you don't follow all of the steps, your coffee maker won't work?
It is amazing what can happen when you just add water.

PS The ice maker started up on it's own a short time later. HJ figured that the kitchen was just too hot and it stopped to cool down. Isn't that sort of an oxymoron? ....An ice machine needing to cool down...hee...hee...hee

My wild night life.

I hate getting up in the middle of the night or should I say in the wee hours of the morning.
As I am typing this post is is now almost 4 A.M. It is my own fault! I know better! I made the mistake of opening my eyes after I got up to get a drink and go to the bathroom. I felt my way downstairs in the dark and made it down okay with no broken body parts. I did the bathroom thing with closed eyes no problem, but when I got to the kitchen to get a drink from the water cooler I opened my eyes. There is a night light in our kitchen that goes on when it gets dark. That way, in the evening, we don't have to keep turning the overhead light on every time we go into that room. I swear the kitchen is the most popular room in our house. Anyway, the reason I opened my eyes was to check my glass before I took a drink. A few years back I didn't check and I almost drank a spider. It seems spiders like to crawl up into the cooler spouts to nest. Even if you use it a lot...and we do. Ha! Is this going to make you go and check your water cooler out? I can tell you for sure that that was a very traumatic episode in my life. YUCK!!!! I had a spider in my glass and if I hadn't seen it move I would have drank it down. I HATE SPIDERS!!! So now I always check my glass before drinking anything. (This is also the reason I don't like to drink from cans.) So anyway, I opened my eyes to check the glass against the night light and because I thought something moved in the glass I turned on the overhead light on to double check. BIG MISTAKE!! Stupid move on my part! Thank goodness there was nothing but water in the glass. It must have been a shadow from my finger. But of course now that my eyes are open with full light hitting them my brain has gone into wake mode.
I HATE WHEN THAT HAPPENS!
Just hunky dory!
Now I am fully awake and to top it off my body decides to throw in a hot flash just for the fun of it.
Whoopee!! I don't know how I take all this excitement in my life. I have such a wild night life!
Of course being a woman and since I am now wide awake why wouldn't I do a load of laundry, fold and put away a basket of towels, play a game on the computer, which I won, and type this post? What woman wouldn't? We multi-task regardless of what time of day or night it is. I hate that too! I am now going to finish drinking my third glass of water (which I know I am going to regret later) and then I am going to go back to bed to try to get back to sleep.
Sweet dreams to me.......I hope.