Not much today. Covered in hives.
My eyes took turns being swollen this week, Thursday left,
Friday Right, Saturday, under eye right...
Giving up bananas this week to see if that's the culprit.
(Off gluten 2 weeks!)
I guess I'll eradicate everything until I'm living off of
Starbucks and apples. (Kidding!)

Hm. So nothing of interest here. Oh! Saw two guys playing tennis outside the court yesterday, I thought because the court was too full. (Which it was.)
"They are not playing tennis," Steven tells me, "They're playing birdie."
So we drove past the two grown guys playing 'birdie' on the lawn, next to the tennis court.
"I think it's sweet," I said.
"Yes," my husband says. "Two men involved in sweet activity." We're laughing now, and he tells me sweet isn't the word. Sometimes you can use a word that isn't exactly the right word and it can work. (For instance, my husband's odd use of the word 'birdie' in lieu of badminton. Personally, I prefer it.)
Something else happened yesterday, and I remember saying, "I'm gonna blog about that!"
Unfortunately, I no longer remember what it was, only that it seemed blogworthy.

And the cat ran away.

I'm itching and so I'm gonna leave you with that. I'm really glad you stopped in~

Have a sweet day!

Retrospect- Monday, April 24, 2006

Another Retrospect, you say? Well, I could tell you that I've been nursing a cold cup of coffee for the past hour listening to the umpteenth day of rain, but it's not so interesting.

so yep. I give you Monday, April 24, 2006

I woke up this morning and opened the deck door. Something about the day called me to garden, something I love to do. Maybe I can get some weeding done! Pulling tangles of wild strawberry vines up from under the roses, I was bit by a spider.
"Let me explain," he said.
"Go on,"
"I've been watching you uproot plants. You can sit there and uproot a small plant, and yet you lovingly work around the larger one that you've decided to befriend. What makes you the judge of what is good?"
"I was just pulling weeds," I said.
"Ah. How do you determine which plant is the weed?"
"Well, usually the one I didn't plant. Are you through now?"
"I'm just getting started," said the spider. "This morning I had two friends. We had a nice breakfast in the undergrowth, and your large filthy hand appeared." I looked at my hand, and indeed, it was filthy.
"I watched you encounter my friend earthworm. You carefully cradled him up in your hand and moved him to safety."
Ah yes! This morning while weeding, I found a little earthworm, trying to escape the newly sunlit ground I uncovered. He slid across my palm, and I wondered, 'Do worms feel love?' As a child, I would pick them off the city sidewalks after the rain, trying to save their drowning little bodies from the afterlife. Even now, when the rains come, I pick them off my driveway, setting them in pots. My husband fishes with them, insuring me that they stay on the hook better if slid on lengthwise, hook through their little worm mouths, the sideways and again. If worms feel pain, do they also feel love? Is it better to feel neither than both? I watched him slip under the landscape timber that borders the garden.
"I remember Earthworm."
"Then I watched you encounter my friend grub worm."
Grub Worm? I didn't remember. I told him so.
"You don't remember GrubWorm because you smashed him with the flat end of your shovel."
"Oh." I did remember that.
"What makes you think you can be the judge of what is good or what is beautiful? I have never met a larger hypocrite than you! Do you take on this God Complex in every aspect of your life? GrubWorm had a sweet, juicy inner core...but based on your opinion of what was good, you disposed of his little grubby life! Hypocrite, I say! Long live your gushy spirit, Grub friend!"
And with that, I smashed him with the flat end of my shovel. (Hey, that way, they can be together, right?)

My spider bite is still sore. (Yes, there's a real spider bite. It all happened, just like that. Although walking back to the house to get some mango tea, I thought I heard a little spider voice, telling me that the spiders wre going to band together. They would hide where I least expect it! I think this voice was Steven's, ha ha...)
One of the things I've learned from Steven over the years is to shake my shoes upside down before I put them on. Spiders, he tells me. Once when he was little, he had cowboy boots. After summer one year, he went to get them out of the closet, and there was a dead rodent inside one. So not only does he shake his shoes, but he also sticks the pair he's going to wear the following day up high on a table. I don't go that far yet, but I do shake, and YES, I have shaken out a spider in the past couple months. (Steven also won't get into bed without checking the sheets & under pillows for spiders. Would you say he has a phobia?)
I was really going to talk about my weekend. My mother, trying to make a lemon meringue pie, saw her crust cracked. Irritable, she went home. Steven, thinking we were having pie, brought his sweet tooth home from office depot, and stood staring at the cracked crust. He decided he'd make scratch brownies. After working on them for twenty minutes, the last ingredient was flour. There were two recipes, side by side, and instead of using 1 cup of flour, he used 2.25. His dream of watching Kill Bill One (again) and eating late night brownines was ruined. No more sugar meant there were no more second chances.
"There's half a pear in the kitchen. If you want, I'll put some chocolate syrup on it." He didn't see any humour in what I'd said. I got a kalhua White Russian out of the fridge and sat with him, watching the hansou sword scalp Lucy Liu. Again. Hmmm.
If I ended this with "I went to the kitchen and got that pear half that the kids had left; sometimes you just have to appreciate the little things" that might sound good. But in truth, I threw it in the trash the next day, so that would be a lie. (Like the spider story is not a lie? you say? Hey, I'm even writing your dialogue in here! No, the story is not a lie, merely the dialogue. Perhaps not even that, but spiders talk much too low for me to be able to understand them.

I love you all so! Have a great morning!

Oh, and Congrats, Shannon~ Your baby is too precious.

Saturday, Actual Exchange

This past Saturday, it was raining, and my husband, children and I sat in the parking lot of Starbucks, the girls drinking green tea frappaccinos, Steven & I with Latte's. I was sitting on the side with the street lamp, looking up at the rain.
I hadn't remembered the rain ever looking like that. Soft, like hair. Strings. Bouncing off my hand like rubber ball snowflakes. Moonlit and majical.
This is the actual exchange between my husband and I as I held my hand out the window marveling at this newfound discovery of rain.
ME- "Look! The rain- it's like moonlit hair; floaty shiny strings of somesort. Amazing..."
HIM- "I wonder what kind of mushrooms they put on your steak."

HA. :D

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Random stuff...

Is there no better finale to a huge deal of a show than a
cringe worthy inspirational song about reaching your dreams?
That's right, I'm talking about American Idol.
And that yearly CRINGE WORTHY ballad at the end.
This year Kara wrote the song. I think she were a wee uncomfortable, but the judges were trying to be nice. "Let's not judge you by that song, let's say you had a great year."

Riding the train of thought for a moment.
Train of thought says
I hate ignorant people.
then, doesn't everyone hate ignorant people?
then, what if ingorant is just a point of view...
To somebody,
I'm probably ignorant.
Hmmm.

I'd prefer not to be.

But maybe,

I don't hate ignorant people.

Maybe I just feel sorry for their lack of intelligence.

then,

well, I never went to college,

and my manuscripts are returned so heartily

perhaps I am not the one to judge

who's ignorant and who's not.

Perhaps no one is.

"Where are those nasty crackers?" he says. What nasty crackers? The nasty seedy ones, and he's digging through the cupboards. Oh, I say, those were my moms and she took them back.

"They were gluten free!!!" he says.

"Yes, and she took them back to spread fancy french cheese on them." They are probably better with cheese, he says. They were so nasty. Taste like burnt up roaches, he tells me, still glancing in the cupboards. :).

"You know," he says, "my stomach and head haven't felt good for a couple days. You think I quit gluten too rapidly?" Um, no. Why, you wantin to eat bread?

"No, I was sorta wanting the beer in the fridge."

(No gluten=no beer, although they make a few gluten free varieties not sold in our tiny town...)

La bave du crapaud

n'atteint pas

la blanche colombe.

Yesterday

You know when you're a child, everything looks better, seems bigger. You eyes magnify things and your memory wanes, til you think things are grander than they actually are. One example is the time my husband was very excited that we were going to Gatorland, a place he visited as a kid.
"They have a 50' swinging bridge over this swamp filled with alligators..."
Well, they don't. They have a little boardwalk, maybe 10-20 feet, over a park area that has no gators. 10-20 feet is probably big for a kid, and children can imagine an empty marsh full of alligators easily. People haven't squashed all the creativity out yet. His mind had to grow the sight he'd seen in order to make it still awe inspiring for the grown mind.
Because the things that we think are great when we're small may not seem so as we get older.
I experienced this yesterday.
Yesterday, I made an old familiar dish my mother made every week growing up. We ate it often, so I didn't remember it to be out of the ordinary.
Boiled chicken hearts & gizzards. You boil em, then dunk them in ketchup with hot sauce. (I told you, my mother said as a kid, I'd eat whatever she cooked. She was right!)
So I boil up hearts and gizzards, and my 10 year old is walking past.
"Taste this," I tell her, and I hold the fork out. She eats it. "Pretty good," she says.
So she walks in circles, talking, eating bites of hearts and gizzards. Fifth or sixth bite in, I hold a little heart up on the end of the fork. "Look! BaBump, Babump, Babump..." (Okay, babump babump is my heart beating sound).
She gives me an odd look. "What? Is that what it is?" Then she spits the bite in the trash, runs out side and starts to spit in the yard.
"You said the first five bites were pretty good," I commented. There'd been a running joke that one day I'd cook em, and my mom was coming over, so I did yesterday.
"I made your favorite," I tell my mother. She responded that we were poor and ate that stuff to make do- when we weren't eating the free Denny's food on the days she worked. Funny, in my mind, Denny's is still this fabulous place, too. I still have an old collection of paper Denny's masks, not even cut from the original sheets. Maybe I could frame then and hang them in the playroom. :D.

That was Yesterday.

What i Give to You

What I give to you is 30 to 45 minutes of my day,
not everyday but sometimes, when I'm

a. bored or

b. not so boring.

Sometimes I go days collecting the non-boring bits for you,
trying to gather little pieces or ordinary that you may not notice
but are not that ordinary after all.

What I give to you is akin to Fallon's giving choice bits to his cats,
A bite here and there yet not the bulk of my day.
The bubbles on the bath, shiny and lovely
but I never go near the water.
There aren't moments where I slip and go deep;
Writing this is like writing to myself.

It's a one-sided sandwich; I am the speaking and the listening.
I am the bread folded over hiding my peanut butter, honey and bananas inside.
There is no second slice of bread in blogging.
:P.
I do not let you view bruised banana chunks
But the big nutty bits are too much of me as a whole!
So you have to eat them
Hope you like them
If you're here you're probably full of nuts yourself

thanks for dropping in :)

Because because because because because!

Because of the wonderful things he does!

I must first apologize for the little coconut story in case its too vulgar for my sweet readers of prudent ears. I actually toned it down to get it here, but I don't know.

Maybe apologizing is the wrong thing to do.

Maybe I cannot ever be the same person twice in a row, twice in my blog even.

Or maybe, I'm the same person in every single blog if you read far enough to get to know it.

And you just stick with me anyhow. (If so, Thanks for that!) Eventually, maybe you'll find me back at the place where you liked me best, and I'll be once again a welcome sight. It'll happen.

We ate some gluten free chocolate chip cookies last night. The dough taste funny, familiar but indescribable. Made from some sort of bean flour. Yum!

My husband and I were watching the movie Baby Mama with Tina Fey the other day. It is so strange and funny what different creatures a man and woman can be. I just kept watching the movie, wondering, "What color is that living room in the apartment? And what about that color? I wonder if it would work in the bathroom or hallway?" So everytime they show the apartment, my brain is in paint chip mode.

So then, my husband shouts, "Hey! Did you see that?" Huh? I say. He grabs the remote and rewinds. Very important indeed for my husband to rewind!

"The park bushes. You see that?" and he has it paused. "The park has been planted to look like a womans genitalia! See that?" Of course, he reasons, they have purposely planted the hedges in the film to look like a giant green, um...bush. Purposely?

I don't know, I have my doubts. But I felt that one person would definitely know-

Jimmy Fallon, of course! Fallon is the one who could bring back that Late Night Letterman feel. I couldn't click with Conan, but Letterman was sarcastic love for me. As a preteen, he was the one that made me laugh, the smart snarky guy who'd hang with the likes of Fran Leibowitz and Bud Melman, and he made television classy and raunchy and lovable. I bought his top ten book and dreamed of him, in a weird way he made me imagine myself not the geek i was, but cool. And trust me, I was a geek.

Fallon now has that chance to make late night right again.

Who doesn't just adore Jimmy Fallon, he just looks like the cute little neighborhood kid...

but he's not- So I email Jimmy Fallon my questions about the paint chips and the vagina park, but no response. Not from his people, nothing. Not a 'Thank you for your email' from the lady in housekeeping, nothing.

Certain of course that Fallon has the answers, I wait. But I feel that probably Jimmy Fallon sits among all his 42 cats, cats over and under his bed, they are scratching on papers like the ones you see on animal detective, then jumping on the bed for bits of cold cheese sandwich. On white bread. Even though white bread is not hip and trendy Manhatten grub.

No doubt Mr. Fallon is reading my blog (right, he's one of the five of ya) sitting on some old star wars bed sheets with cats cats cats. I do however give him the benefit of the doubt, as I imagine he would give them the center bits of choice, and eat only the crust for himself.

As I do you. ?.

"No! No! Don't take my cats!" he'd say tp the pet detectives, crying and covered with hair, but as a young celeb, his cats are safe. I've heard that when he's feeling kinky, his wife goes up to broadway and rents an old Cats costume including full makeup. But with a skirt, no undies, just a Cats top half then the skirt and some orange leg warmers. Cause that how Jimmy Fallon gets happy.

But don't tell anybody you heard it from me!!!

Ha.

So I've got tons of gardening to do...

If you purchase roses from mail order own root sites, often they tell you to snap off the buds to stimulate root production. (I know, I really need a separate blog for this. Otherwise, one minute you care, the next you don't)...I really have a hard time snapping off the pending flowers on a potted plant about to bloom. I want to see them. I wait too long, so I can see them, but then their scrawny asses stay scrawny too long. So my gardening tip for the day is pinch off the buds on new mail order own root roses.

(this rose is called L'Ingenue)

Thanks for stopping in-

Irritable Me

Long time no see! (okay, just a few days.)

I'm not my cheery self this weekend. Could be a few reasons for that, like...

1. Due to some recent unpleasant gluten allergy discoveries,

this week we removed all wheat and gluten items from our home. Three big boxes full.

This would include cereal, pasta, muffin mixes, brownie mix,

an unopened pack of cookie dough, noodle soups, of course.

This also includes the Wasabi Almonds we love so much, and

I'm trying to find a Wheat free soy sauce we can mix with wasabi for California rolls...

This will also require some diligence and will power.

Not that we go to Red Lobster more than 1-2 times per year,

but the very idea of telling the Red Lobster folk to hold the bread basket is disturbing at the least. No more blogging on my love for the Cap'n, as I ate my last bowl of it a few days ago. The box of pumpkin bread mix I hid a few days ago, my husband found. "It's all going," he says.
Bare with me as I go through my gluten withdrawals.

2. My bathroom floor. This week, I noticed something on my floor. I've tried scrubbing it, but no luck. (Okay, I'm going to show you a couple pics of my bathroom...Woo Hoo!)

(No decor jokes. Remember, I revel in being boring.)

Okay, now look closer! Ack! Yellow stains on my marble!

I read that I need to make some sort of poultice out of peroxide and gypsum to fix this, which I'll be trying out, then I'll be resealing the floor.

I tell my husband my findings. "You can do it," he says. I can?

I should've titled this 'my frou frou Martha Stewart day', as I feel quite weird talking about a marble floor or admitting the possession of one on my blog.

But like a dog with its mind forever on some squirrel, the marble tile stain never is too far from mind. Floor, floor, floor.

Though currently rotated with passing thoughts of some sort of glutenous item I can't have.

I have to thaw some chicken today, and we'll boil red potatoes (no gluten there) and,

wait, what's that? A spot on my floor? A giant spot on my floor? And it looms overhead.

3. I wasted 1.5 hours watching a TiVoed movie called The Breed. Stupidest movie ever. The cast didn't seem so bad- Michelle Rodriguez, Oliver Hudson, Hill Harper. They could have done worse. But the movie was just completely awful. First of all, these folk are supposed to seem like frivolous college students, but yet they look like intelligent 30-somethings. Old ass college students. So they fly to this island they inherit from a dead uncle. On the island are they dogs with perpetual rabies. When the folks get bit, they can sense the dogs.

At first, I thought that maybe the people bit would turn rabid and get some special effects. No such luck. The dogs are not so scary. The movie is scary bad. Make note that if you need an office gift for someone you really don't like, buy the DVD and wrap it up. (That's evil of me; go ahead and get them a nice movie. Good Karma will reward you. The little devil in me says the wrong thing sometimes...)

I apologize for being so irritable. I think I need some fresh air.

If this is your first time visiting my blog, go to the list and click on something in 08. I don't think there's too much 'cranky Kat Lee Reader' in 08.

If you are here because you Googled 'Toilet Seat Alarms' (one third of all folk that have stopped by got here by googling toilet seat alarms! true. It's because of a previous blog somewhere)

thanks for stopping in!

And good luck to you with your toilet alarm review search.

I'm happy to have helped you in that way :).

Much love, yours truly~

My husband's ride has air conditioning,

Which is awesome!

If only I didn't feel as though

I needed a booster seat to drive it.

Today I saw a long brown piece of tape from an old cassette stretched out and blowing in the wind in front of the grocery store. It's been a while since I'd seen one of those.

I also saw a box of CoCo Wheat at the grocery.

And a bottle of Geritol beneath the vitamins.

It made me think of Lawrence Welk.

Do you know who Lawrence Welk was?...

I wear a little bracelet.

It says

You can Never go down the drain. -Mr. Rogers

Now that I started that durn rainbow of bits,

I felt slightly obligated to come up with two more things...

Have a sweet sweet day.

Really Quickly!

(The family napping on a Disney bench outside the now Defunct Space Mtn. I took the photo.)

Okay, I'm home!
But my to do list is long, too long for the days limited hours, and I should NOT be here.
Really. But I am, so I'll be very quick.
My 13th Anniversary today! Definitely, I should be blogging about how awesome my husband is, but instead, I'll blog about his and my favorite things during the trip.
So we got home late last night, and after getting all our stuff unloaded & kids to bed, we sat and watched Ladies #1 Detective Agency, then went to bed ourselves, exhausted.
The light went out and Steven says to me,
"What was your favorite thing on the trip?" & I'm drifting off already. Huh? I say.
He asked again. I already know what he's going to say.
"You wanna know mine?"
"I know already. You're gonna say breakfast."
"Not just breakfast, you remember the-"
"The ladies who thought I was crazy. Yes. I knew you were going to say that."

In order to keep the girls surprised, we said we were going to Kentucky. We got lucky when they never saw us cross the Florida state line, and checked into the hotel that night. But the next day at breakfast, Shanna mentioned to the waitresses it was her birthday.
"Are you going to Disney? Epcot?"
The kids didn't hear her and I panicked. (Interesting, panic has a k when you add ed...)
"H-huh?" I'm stuttering.
"Are you in Florida for the Birthday?" they ask.
"We're not in Florida, W-we-we're in Kentucky," I get out. Steven is staring at me across the table and in that moment, I know this is coming back to me. The waitresses look afraid, as they back away from the table slowly. I'm nuts.

"Do you know what my favorite thing was on the trip?" I say.
"Hmmm?"
"When we were at that raggedy backwoods Captain D, and I ordered the salmon plate, and you asked the little hillbilly girl if the Salmon was caught in the wild or farm raised..."
He did. He did it, and I just stared at him.
"Are you for real?" the girl asks, "Is he jokin?"
"No, he's not joking."
When they start to holler back to the folks in the kitchen the origin of the fish, people were getting in line behind us. I went to the table with the girls because I didn't want them to think it was me.
"I should've pinned that on you," he says. "I should've said 'My wife wants to know!' "
That would have been completely like him. For those of you that don't have Captain D, it's like McDonald's but with fish.
His question would be the equivalent of asking the origin of the beef in a big mac. Um.

I really do not have time to blog today though.
And there are things I'd love to blog about!
Like-
Accidentally getting on the email list for Freecycle.
Every other email is about guinea pigs, guinea pigs taken, free guinea pigs, but the other day, somebody was giving away their control top hose. 14 pairs. Various colors.
And
I sold the naked cucumber painting! (There's a photo on this blog somewhere, but I don't know the exact location/day of it. I think it was early 2009, if you are wanting to see it.)
And the time alloted for blogging
And Jimmy Fallon didn't answer my email
So I'll probably have to blog about that as well soon
but not on my anniversary,
which also happens to be the last day we can work on my daughters project
which is far from finished. Argh.
More later. Have a really good day!

yours truly :D

2 Cone Day!

2 cone day

Jame & Lucy were playing when jingle ring! The ice cream man!

Then Jane gave Lucy the money to get hers.

After the long long long line, Lucy got back

but Jane was riding off with her mommy & daddy.

"You can eat mine!" Jane yelled!

A 2 Cone Day! Yippee! WoW!

But Lucy counter her chickens before they hatched!

She didn't keep her eye on the prize.

But somebody always is &

By the time Lucy opened her eyes,

Unseen forces that be had gobbled them up

& All Lucy had was sticky fingers!

I got a lot of stuff to do & won't be back with you til Monday or Tuesday-ish...

~Til then, have a great weekend~

& Keep your eye on the prize :)