Day to Day

I’m An Ant Killer

1 Comment / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk /

TW gave me an ant farm for Christmas because I have always wanted one and never had one.

I was very excited. It’s one of those weird blue gel glowing ant farm thingies. I was so excited that I sent away for my ants the first weekend after Christmas.

TW suggested that was not a good idea because it is winter and the ants probably can’t be shipped in the winter.

Oh. Yea.

Weeks passed and the only response I had from the people I ordered the ants from was “thank you for your order…” so I thought maybe they knew that ants couldn’t be shipped to the frozen bowels of hell (which some people call Chicagoland) in January and they’d just wait to send them in the spring.

It’s been so long since I ordered them that I really almost forgot about them. If it wasn’t for the empty ant farm sitting on my desk, I really would have forgotten about them — but every now and then Buster butt jumps up on the edge of the desk and knocks the ant farm over and I wonder about my ants.

I went out to the mailbox this morning while I was warming up the car. There were three tiny little envelope packages in there. One was some jewelry I ordered as Christmas presents way back last November. (sigh) One was a new iPhone case for TW (because Buster butt ate her other new one last week.) One was… my ants. My very frozen ants.

The outside of the envelope says “Keep away from extreme heat or cold.” Sigh. I think the high between the time the mail arrived and the time I retrieved the mail was about – 9F and the poor things were in that box for a good 16 hours. I’d say that’s extreme cold and from the shape of the poor things in their little tube, I’m guessing they’d agree if ant ghosts could talk.

I’m feeling all sad and guilty about that tube of ants. *sniff* May they RIP.

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I’m Still Craving Roast Chicken

4 Comments / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Foodie /

At some point last weekend? Or maybe it was last Friday? Whatever, I don’t remember exactly when… I started to smell … something … every time I was in the office. Something familiar. Something almost… comforting? What was that odor?

It finally occurred to me that it was something like roast chicken or maybe turkey. Huh. Weird. Was TW roasting a chicken for dinner? That would be nice but why was she roasting a chicken so early? Was something going on that meant she needed to cook early? Or we needed to eat early? Or … oh well. Whatever.

I assumed that’s what it was and went on about my day only to discover much later that TW had not really planned anything for dinner and she was most definitely not roasting a turkey.

Huh. What was that odor?

We ended up having pork chops and dressing and some other vegetables that I don’t really remember now and I kind of half decided that the odor in the office might have been dressing. It kind of smells like that and maybe RJ had found the bag of vegan dressing and made herself a pot earlier in the day? Weird but it could happen. RJ likes dressing.

I went about my business trying very hard to forget that the office STILL smelled like… roast chicken? stuffing/dressing? SOMETHING… but after two days, it was getting harder to forget that the office smelled that way.

On the third day, I was pretty much going nuts and had decided that my subconscious was telling me that I needed to roast a chicken or the scent was NOT going to go away. So I made a note to myself to take a chicken out of the freezer.

Later that evening, the dogs were causing a ruckus at the prairie dog cage. Skeeter and Lola barking, Betty banging on the bars, Buster butt banging on the bars. Total mayhem. I went over to shoo the dogs away only to find Buster trying very hard to remove some stalks of celery from the cage and the odor, the one that I thought was roast chicken or stuffing … it was oh so very strong.

Celery. It was celery. Not a chicken roasting. Not dressing/stuffing. Celery.

I cursed and removed all of the celery from the cage because the girls were certainly not eating it. I removed the celery from the mouths of all three dogs (because by that time Buster had successfully removed several stalks) and threw it all away.

I also forbid TW from ever putting celery in the girls’ cages again. It was bad enough that the office smelled like squash for three days the last time she put a half of a butternut squash in their cage but this was worse. The not knowing what the smell was or WHY it was there was so much worse than that. I really had begun to think I was nuts.

It’s been several days since I solved the mystery and cleared out the celery. The office hasn’t smelled like roast chicken in ages.

But, every time I sit down at my desk I think, “Gosh, roast chicken would be really awesome for dinner.”

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WTF WWF?

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Pet Peeves /

Words With Friends is pissing me the hell off.

They updated the app again and that always means things are a little wonky at first but this time, it’s so bad I can barely manage to play.

For the first few days, every time I opened the app, I’d have to pull the screen down three times before I could get it to even show me any of my in progress games.

Then, when I’d open a board, I’d get 55 popups telling me “You won” or “You lost” and I’d have to dismiss them before I could access the board.

Then when I accessed the board, it often looked like this…

Worse yet, none of the actual words on this board are even ON the game I’ve just tried to open. STUPID, WWF.

Yesterday, Karenlynn messaged me with something like “are you too busy filofaxing to play two games at once?” I thought she asked that because I hadn’t played in hours and hours so I replied that I’d just been busy with work and then the 5 hour prairie dog rescue ordeal kept me away from my phone.

But no, I think the problem is that a game I know we started is just gone from the list. There’s another one that says it’s her move, and it has no tiles placed — but that board also says that the chat has been closed because the game is over.

WTF?

Then, on another board, I played a word — the screen reloaded and it was there, so I closed it to go to another game and… that first board, it’s showing that it’s still my turn and my word didn’t actually play after all. But when I try to play a word, it won’t let me.

It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even want to open the damn app — it’s so bad. (And yes, I’ve rebooted my iPhone and yes, I’ve looked to see if there’s another update to fix these problems.)

Get your act together, WWF. This is just stupid.

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Buster’s Not the Only Butt

4 Comments / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk /

All of the dogs have been TROUBLE for the last few days. I guess I could blame the warmer weather? They have certainly been excited about being able to stay out for more than 90 seconds without risking frost bite.

Lola, in particular, has been thrilled to mouth off to all of the squirrels and try to climb fences and trees to catch them. Poor thing doesn’t realize that even if she can climb the fence, she’s still 30 feet too low to reach the squirrel.

Skeeter poodle has barked pretty much non-stop, at invisible things — though TW said last night there were coyotes outside. I didn’t see them so maybe Skeeter just somehow told her they were out there?

Buster butt just runs around madly because the other two are excited by stuff. He has no idea what that stuff is but he’s more than happy to help them cause chaos.

It’s not just the running around and barking though.

I’ve found Skeeter eating several things she should not have.

A shoe.
A book.
Some mail that turned out only to be an empty envelope, thankfully.
And… the big one… TW’s brand new leather iPhone wallet that she’d only had for 36 hours. Her brand new leather iPhone wallet that she LOVES. Yep. Destroyed. By Skeeter. Not by Buster. Though it is possible that Buster retrieved it and passed it on to Skeeter to eat. He does that sometimes. Still. She KNOWS BETTER.

Speaking of knowing better… Buster might be learning something…

One of the most frustrating things about Buster butt is that he has not seemed to learn that we are unhappy with him when he eats all of the things. When we yell or stomp our way toward him or do some other thing to try and stop him from eating what he’s eating, he has always just sat there chewing the forbidden item and looking at us like we’re nuts or even wagged his tail thinking we’re coming to play.

For the last couple of days though, he’s made that ashamed face when he sees me coming to retrieve something he shouldn’t have. A couple of times he’s slunk away from what he was headed for when he heard me tell him NO.

I’m telling myself that this is a sign that we’re making progress. It IS a sign we’re making progress, right?

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Back to Work — For Reals

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

Today wasn’t my first day back to work but it was my first REAL(ish) day back to work. Most of my co-workers are still on vacation but it seems like the community is back to blogging and back to BlogHer. And I was busy, busy, busy all day long.

And I do mean ALL DAY LONG.

I’m still busy but I figured if I didn’t take a three minute break to blog then it’s possible that I might not blog since I still have to load up the trash bins and get them out to the street and work on my filofaxes and do some laundry and check my email and play WWF. Not to mention battle this head cold that’s kicking my darn ass.

I did a good job of taking cold meds, on schedule, today — that helped me get through the work day. I should take cold meds more often rather than trying to avoid cold meds and doing a lot of moaning because I haven’t taken cold meds and I feel like crap because of it.

Is this making any sense? I’m just typing without looking at the screen because I’m watching the Ceiva digital frame to see if there are new photos yet (I don’t think there are… which is the problem with this damn frame. My daughter and son in law do not send new photos often enough. If I’m going to start at this frame all day, I need new photos every day.)

And now my three minute break is over and I’m going to go take some cold medicine and text my daughter to see when I’m gonna get new photos.

Happy 2nd day of January.

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Lord, I’m Tired

1 Comment / Christmas, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk /

Cookies were decorated. An iPhone was taken apart and not repaired. Presents were wrapped. Stockings hung. Pizza was delivered, though the vegan pizza I ordered wasn’t vegan. Pajamas were unwrapped. Giggling took place. Lola and Skeeter got into a fight. Buster is still hiding, though he did tolerate pets from Michelle Belle. Packages did not arrive when they were supposed to arrive — even Amazon let me down, sigh. All of the laundry is done. My finger may or my not be infected. There are a lot of baked goods, vegan, gluten-free and non-vegan and gluten-filled.

I really hope the bathwater I hear running is for me… my back is killing me. It was a pretty good day.

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Almost…

2 Comments / Christmas, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk /

Chris’s flight was right on time this morning. Michelle’s is only an hour delayed, and she’ll be here in a little over an hour.

I wrapped another dozen Christmas gifts. Realized I forgot to buy something that I always buy and will have to do that tomorrow.

Buster is terrified. Really terrified. I mean really really terrified. He hasn’t eaten anything he shouldn’t have eaten all day — but that’s because he’s pretty much just cowering in corners. Poor little guy. There is no yelling at Buster going on right now. Just lots of soft encouraging whispers.

I made my sugar cookies today, in preparation for the kids’ decorating them tomorrow.

TW and RJ baked a ton of things. Skeeter ate a lot of macaroons (not macarons) and Buster took a nibble of one off of my finger.

They demolished a brand new toy and Lola nicely brought each squeaker to me as Skeeter removed it from the toy.

I’ve run three loads through the dishwasher and have another half load ready to go, tomorrow after we eat the yummy cinnamon rolls my brother and sister-in-law (yes I have a brother and no Christine is not my sister, she is my sister-in-law) sent.

All of the laundry is DONE. All of it. It’s even put away – except for TW’s mom’s stuff and the little kids’ things but since I don’t put their clothes away, my work is DONE. Done I tell you. ‘Til tomorrow when I’ll have a load of towels to do.

I think I’ll go read or maybe just watch Chris read. He loves it when I do that.

Almost… Read More »

Progress Made, Avoided Sabotage

3 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

At about 1pm, I didn’t think we were going to get anything done. We’d had a nap and I did not want to get out of bed. Those black out blinds TW installed last week are doing wonders for my sleep — I’m getting almost too much sleep. Nice change but when my to do list was calling, that was not a good thing. Oddly enough, TW got right up and was busy while I was trying to pretend half of the day wasn’t gone.

I did get up eventually — I turned on Spotify, loaded up a Christmas music playlist and got to work. But, the second song was Andy Williams singing Happy Holidays and all I could see was Mom of Ali and I almost had to call it quits for the day, I was too busy laughing to get anything done. I fought it and cursed Mom of Ali a lot and all was well again.

Here’s what my to do list looks like now…

1) Wrap some presents. A lot of presents (so I don’t have to stay up til the wee hours on Christmas eve.) – I wrapped 15 on Saturday night and have plans to wrap another dozen this evening.
2) Clean out the cold room to access the Christmas decorations (and find the bloody wintery clothes. I keep buying winter clothes because I’ve procrastinated this for so long. Not kidding.)
3) Do about five loads of laundry. I did all five loads but after finding the winter clothes and blankets, I’ve got five more to go. Two in progress now. Gah.
4) Make sugar cookies.
5) Clean Off My DESK for godsakes. Though TW’s side is kind of messy. I’ll get that fixed up after I wrap gifts tonight.
6) Go to Whole Foods. And Trader Joe’s. And the gift shop in the mall across from TJ’s to look at their Filofax supplies and buy a book — we bought three books.
7) Move stuff around in the fridge and small freezer. The doors are barely closing and once people start getting into them, it’s going to be chaos. I think I’ll have to do it again tomorrow though…
8) Figure out whether I’ve moved all of the files I need from my old laptop to my new laptop. Carbonite is not as friendly as I thought it was… sigh.
9) Find the Christmas movies and put them somewhere that the kids can access them but Buster cannot. Interestingly, most of them were already together — right in front. I wonder if Elly did that when she was going through the movies a couple of weeks ago?
10) Find the extra sheets, pillows and blankets for the big kids and find somewhere to put them that Buster won’t eat them. hahaha, never happen (the latter part of that.)
11) Take a whole lot of trash out to the bin before the snow starts. It doesn’t look like we’re going to be hit as hard as originally forecast but there’s nothing worse than trying to fill frozen snow covered trash bins when you could have done them BEFORE they were frozen snow covered trash bins. I got trash out but the lids were frozen solid … at leas there wasn’t a foot of snow on top of them.
12) Get my car washed? Yea, I’d like to do that but I’m guessing I missed my window of opportunity and the car wash is not going to be open due to craptastic weather. Poop. I should just scratch this off the list now.
13) Figure out what time the kids are due to arrive — and get ready to start tracking their flights (which will no doubt be delayed due to craptastic weather.)
14) Convince Buster butt that people who come to visit are not going to kill him if he looks at them — or if they look at him. Gah.
15) Find a book to read, from my stacks, because I don’t seem to have any library books that interest me… thank goodness it’s almost time for some new reading challenges. I found a library book that I’m going to give a try. I’m not sure it’s going to hold my attention so I’ll just revert to something lighter that I picked out from my stacks.
16) Find the three gifts that came ages ago — I don’t remember seeing them when I inventoried the gifts last week. Hell. Where did I hide those things?
17) Find the gift cards I brought into the house yesterday. Why didn’t I put them with the other gift cards? What was I thinking?
18) Visit Joy.
19) Run some caramel apples down to our landlord.
20) Yell at Buster for eating things he shouldn’t eat x20… which is what I’d best go do right now… Work in progress, though he was pretty good today — all things considered. Knock on wood.

Progress Made, Avoided Sabotage Read More »

Must Get More Done

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

My to do list is not shrinking. For every thing I cross off, I seem to add two more things and I only have one day left to get this stuff done… oy.

1) Wrap some presents. A lot of presents (so I don’t have to stay up til the wee hours on Christmas eve.)
2) Clean out the cold room to access the Christmas decorations (and find the bloody wintery clothes. I keep buying winter clothes because I’ve procrastinated this for so long. Not kidding.)
3) Do about five loads of laundry.
4) Make sugar cookies.
5) Clean Off My DESK for godsakes.
6) Go to Whole Foods.
7) Move stuff around in the fridge and small freezer. The doors are barely closing and once people start getting into them, it’s going to be chaos.
8) Figure out whether I’ve moved all of the files I need from my old laptop to my new laptop. Carbonite is not as friendly as I thought it was… sigh.
9) Find the Christmas movies and put them somewhere that the kids can access them but Buster cannot.
10) Find the extra sheets, pillows and blankets for the big kids and find somewhere to put them that Buster won’t eat them. hahaha, never happen (the latter part of that.)
11) Take a whole lot of trash out to the bin before the snow starts. It doesn’t look like we’re going to be hit as hard as originally forecast but there’s nothing worse than trying to fill frozen snow covered trash bins when you could have done them BEFORE they were frozen snow covered trash bins.
12) Get my car washed? Yea, I’d like to do that but I’m guessing I missed my window of opportunity and the car wash is not going to be open due to craptastic weather. Poop. I should just scratch this off the list now.
13) Figure out what time the kids are due to arrive — and get ready to start tracking their flights (which will no doubt be delayed due to craptastic weather.)
14) Convince Buster butt that people who come to visit are not going to kill him if he looks at them — or if they look at him. Gah.
15) Find a book to read, from my stacks, because I don’t seem to have any library books that interest me… thank goodness it’s almost time for some new reading challenges.
16) Find the three gifts that came ages ago — I don’t remember seeing them when I inventoried the gifts last week. Hell. Where did I hide those things?
17) Find the gift cards I brought into the house yesterday. Why didn’t I put them with the other gift cards? What was I thinking?
18) Visit Joy.
19) Run some caramel apples down to our landlord.
20) Yell at Buster for eating things he shouldn’t eat x20… which is what I’d best go do right now…

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Drowning In Caramel Apples

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

My sister sent us a four pack of caramel apples from Harry and David. That was awesome and we’re very appreciative. (Elly, so far, has been most appreciative and ate one within 3 minutes of arriving home on the day they arrived.)

Today, TW was going to pick her mom up at the nursing home and found a box from Harry and David on the porch — the same exact kind of box the caramel apples came in. I laughed and said “Surely it’s not more caramel apples…” Sure enough, another four pack.

I opened up the packaging to read the card and discovered — these weren’t meant for us. They were for a family in Massachusetts. From a family we don’t know.

I checked the mailing label and it was definitely addressed to me, so the error wasn’t with FedEX it was Harry and David’s accident.

I emailed them this evening to let them know that there was a mix up. I got a very quick reply from Harry and David so I’m pretty sure they’ll fix it all up for those folks, quickly. Thank goodness — I’d sure hate for the family in Massachusetts to be caramel apple-less this Christmas.

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