tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13384010099627395872024-03-13T11:34:50.813-04:00Left Over PieBeverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.comBlogger161125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-34248109215207472272018-08-06T19:25:00.001-04:002018-08-06T19:25:39.410-04:00Tap. Tap. Is this thing on?Oh hi. I'm back after almost 4 years.<br />
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First of all, I need your opinions. I know Blogger is kind of like the anchovy of pizza toppings - a few people still like it but it's pretty old school with very few things you can customize. I'm thinking about changing to a different platform/company/whatever you call it. Do y'all recommend Wordpress? I've looked online and that seems to be what is recommended. But I have to pay for it so I want to see if anyone has better suggestions before I switch and put my money into something. Keep in mind that technology is not my thang, so if it requires a lot of technical expertise it's probably not for me. <br />
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The main thing I'd really like to be able to do is set it up so I can have people request to subscribe and not have it open for anyone in the world to see. I saw what June went through with people finding her blog. I had a different blog years ago that someone in my real life found and she started leaving anonymous comments about my appearance that were quite hurtful. It was all because she had a falling out with a mutual friend who ended up having to go to the police because this girl was leaving the mutual friend threatening voice mails. It was really ugly and while she and I had never had any issues, she decided to find me online and start attacking me because I remained friends with the mutual person. I had absolutely nothing to do with their fight - it was all a business thing gone bad between them. I'd really like to avoid having something like that happen again so I want to secure things a little bit and that doesn't seem to be an option here on Blogger. <br />
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Since some of you may be new and know next to nothing about me, I'll tell y'all a little bit about myself. <br />
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I've lived in Atlanta my entire life. I'll be 50 in less than two weeks (how did that happen?). I have two brothers - one older, one younger. Both of my biological parents are deceased. My mom died a couple of weeks after I turned 5 and my dad was remarried 9 months later before I turned 6. The week after my 44th birthday my dad died. So hey, my birthday brings up super happy anniversaries, right? My mom who raised me is still alive. I work at a law firm and have been a legal assistant for 18 years. I was once married to my high school sweetheart (who was anything but a sweetheart after a number of years and instead became an alcoholic, bi-polar, emotional abusing asshole) and I've been divorced for 14 years. I had an 8 year relationship after that with a Brazilian guy and that's a long story for another day (a few of you already know that story). I had another 2 year relationship which I ended last summer, but I don't want to talk about that one particularly. <br />
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Now I'm single and dating. And I have stories. So many stories. But I don't want people to be able to find them, so I really need to move things somewhere else before I share them. <br />
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I know, this is a boring post. They won't all be. <br />
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But for now, I just need to know if Wordpress is the way to go. Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-73244208869165337092014-10-13T11:10:00.000-04:002014-10-13T11:10:38.924-04:00How to look like a gorgeous model in very easy steps.Okay, do any of you remember when I humiliated myself with the step-by-step makeup photos last year when I decided to be a Lichtenstein painting for Halloween? <a href="http://leftoverpie.blogspot.com/2013/10/i-cannot-believe-im-putting-these.html" target="_blank">Trust me, it was about as humiliating as it gets. </a><br />
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Guess what? That was so much fun, I'm doing it again today!! <br />
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Are y'all ready for this? I'm not entirely sure I am. My mom is coming from Texas tomorrow to stay at my house for a week and I have two (and possibly three) friends coming in this Friday evening so I will have a house full of people this week. We are going to the Halloween Festival in Little 5 Points on Saturday so I decided I better make sure I knew what I was doing and how long my makeup would take this year so yesterday I decided to practice. Before I did my practice run of makeup yesterday, I had cleaned 3 bathrooms (SO MUCH FUN!), cleaned my kitchen from top to bottom, cleaned up my dining room after hosting a wild and crazy night of cards until late Saturday night, and I was on my second load of laundry, so I was already looking a bit haggard before I did this. Which was good because I was going for a gross and disgusting look and I had a great head start - exhausted, tired, sweaty and gross. I am a dream catch for some guy out there.....I don't know how I haven't been snatched up.<br />
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I started out by messily swiping and kind of patching my face with regular makeup, white makeup, and gray all over my face. And I smudged black cream around my eyes. <br />
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<i>The frizzy and gray hair! The eyes! The patched on makeup! The rattiest and most worn out tank top on the planet! Behold the most beautiful woman of the blogosphere:</i></div>
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Then I apparently wanted to look like I had gotten into a fight.....and had my butt handed to me......so I added smudges of red around my eyes.<br />
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<i>Cindy Crawford has nothing on me:</i></div>
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Then I decided to measure out some strips of paper towel on my cheek bones.</div>
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<i>This is probably what Heidi Klum does every.single.day.</i></div>
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And then I stuck the paper towel strips on my cheeks with some liquid latex.</div>
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<i>I think Gisele keeps liquid latex in her makeup bag for this very purpose:</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0Icpf5h6LKQl_wydlWwiKCYHy25vdgmWeifoVztgjeadEunGNTsLyPi0B3w25mAJSWfHuadU-SufLDJ7gEK4uvktRTpiJ_k4hmOsQRBQ6lG0Z8icLM6iWh9vTBoTiieShc6drhL9_W5y/s1600/photo4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0Icpf5h6LKQl_wydlWwiKCYHy25vdgmWeifoVztgjeadEunGNTsLyPi0B3w25mAJSWfHuadU-SufLDJ7gEK4uvktRTpiJ_k4hmOsQRBQ6lG0Z8icLM6iWh9vTBoTiieShc6drhL9_W5y/s1600/photo4.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></div>
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And then it was time for the best product of all......BLOODY SCAB!</div>
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<i>Elle MacPherson passed along this great tip when we were about to walk the runway one time: Bloody Scab will contour your cheekbones like nothing else! But she called it Croute de Sang because she likes to sound fancy.</i></div>
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<i>OMG, y'all! She was so right! Just check out the contouring I got from using this stuff!</i> <i>Y'all should listen to Elle's tips. I decided to contour my neck as well because I liked it so much:</i></div>
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Y'all want to see how well it contoured both sides of my face though, right? </div>
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<i>I will never run out of Bloody Scab again as long as I live! Oh excuse me.....Croute de Sang. Elle told me I should practice talking fancier than a girl from Georgia normally does.</i></div>
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Then I looked in the mirror and I said to myself, I said, "Self, you have never looked better in your entire 46 years of life on this planet! But maybe we need to work on the lips a little. They kind of pale in comparison to your cheeks. The cheeks shouldn't get all of the attention." And I agreed with myself and I pulled out some black lipstick and the red cream makeup again.</div>
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<i>Oh, y'all. This was a wise, wise, wise decision on my part. It's maybe the wisest makeup decision I have ever made in all my years of applying makeup. But I started off sneaking my mom's makeup out of her bathroom after she left for work when I was in 7th grade, applying it while sitting at the bus stop using a teeny tiny mirror, so really, things could only improve from there, right? This lipstick application is a culmination of years of practice. </i></div>
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There still seemed to be a little bit of room for improvement so I thought and thought and thought some more to come up with what else I could do with the Bloody Scab. Sorry, Elle.....the Croute de Sang. It's really such a miracle product!</div>
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<i>Well shit, y'all. Why didn't I think of it before? Let's put some of it coming out my nose!</i></div>
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I studied myself in the mirror and I still felt like something was missing.</div>
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<i>A SAFETY PIN!!!! Of course! But I discovered I didn't have those huge safety pins so I'll run by the Clinique counter after work one day and pick up some from their "Hardware" line so I can complete my cheek look a little better than this:</i></div>
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I planned on washing that gray right out of my hair at the same time I was very sadly washing that Croute de Sang right off of my face, but in the meantime I wanted to spruce up my hair just a tad to go with my fabulous new makeup repertoire even if it was just me and the bathroom mirror (and the iPhone camera) that would get to enjoy it last night.</div>
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<i>This is what I whipped up on the fly (and I decided to try and copy the disgusted and soulless look the best supermodels seem to always have because I think that's the real secret to their success):</i></div>
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<i>Then I wondered if my look would be better if I was in some different lighting because I know that's always important too. So I went into my bedroom with only daylight coming in the window and snapped a couple of more selfies:</i></div>
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I just love my new look! How about y'all? </div>
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Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-57706791685927114482014-10-01T12:10:00.000-04:002014-10-01T12:10:27.407-04:00Well, I have been told they are fabulous, but this guy must have really thought so.As you can all see, my goal of writing more regularly on here is going really well so far.<br />
<br />
I always seem to have stuff to write about but I don't seem to make the time to sit and write it all out is the problem. I've been hosting a lot of stuff at my house, I went on a date with a new boy (which Imma tell y'all about today), one of my neighbors moved far away, a couple of more things have broken in my house, work has been busy, busy, busy, etc.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I think it's best that I just talk about one of those things today and that is the crazy ass date I went out on a few weeks ago.<br />
<br />
Y'all, I have not given up on my relationship with HB, but I honestly just have no idea what exactly is going on with that whole situation and so I gave myself a certain deadline that some certain things needed to happen and/or change, and if they didn't and then someone came along I was feeling interested in, then I would explore it and see what happened. And I have been doing a lot of crying and a lot of praying about the situation with HB if I'm being completely honest. I begged God to give me a gigantic sign as to what I should do and I'm kind of getting some mixed signals. But one of the signs was clearly telling me to keep holding out that the HB thing is going to work out okay. Because HB is such a good and decent man, and I explored things with another guy who wasn't either of those things.<br />
<br />
It was 9 days after my self-imposed deadline and I was at the grocery store after work looking rather haggard and I hate grocery shopping as it is, and there were some crazy people in the store that night such as the lady who was losing her ever loving shit because the fried chicken at the deli was not fresh out of the fryer and she didn't want to wait 20 minutes for them to cook more. And honestly by the time she bitched out 3 people at the deli, the lady doing cooking demonstrations across from the deli, and a couple of managers, they could have cooked her some fresh chicken because I'm pretty sure she was screaming and making a scene for at least 20 minutes.<br />
<br />
As I got in the line to check out, a guy came up in line behind me and leaned up right into my face and said, "You are absolutely beautiful." And beautiful was the last thing I was feeling at that moment and he kind of startled me getting all up in my face so I jumped backwards away from him. So he said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Am I being creepy? I really don't want to be creepy. I just think you are a beautiful woman." So I told him thank you and then I noticed he only had two items so I let him go in front of me since I had half a buggy full of stuff. He chatted with me, introduced himself, shook my hand, and then he walked out the door. And it was incredibly flattering.<br />
<br />
I checked out, walked out the door and I was walking towards my car when I heard him shouting my name and running up behind me. He said, "I was wondering if it might be okay if I get your phone number so I can call you and we can get to know each other a bit better." I told him that would probably be okay and then he said he would load my groceries in my car for me. So I let him do that and then I gave him my number. In the conversation he told me he is an actor and perhaps he could tell I was a bit skeptical so he pulled up something on his phone showing me he had an audition scheduled for the following week for a new show coming out on NBC this fall and that is how I saw his last name so I could Google him. No, I'm not telling y'all his name because (1) he's not famous and I can promise you that you've never heard of him even though he has been in some very well known shows and a couple of movies; and (2) this is not going to be a very flattering story about him and I don't want to get charged with slander. And I'm really bummed about (2) because holy crap is he a good looking guy and I hate that he turned out to not be a very decent guy (or at least not the type of guy I would ever want to be involved with romantically). And there are quite a few things that I'm going to leave out of this story because I think it's for the best that they remain private but suffice it to say that they are also not flattering things.<br />
<br />
About a week and a half after meeting him at the grocery store, I had not heard from him and decided I had nothing to lose so I sent him a text telling him I hope he was having a great week and asking how his audition had gone. He replied and said the audition had gone well but he had not heard anything so he didn't know if he had gotten the part. And that's all he said. So I responded and told him to feel free to call me sometime if he'd like. And he responded and said he would. And that's all he said.<br />
<br />
About 5 minutes later he sent me another message and asked if he could be completely honest and upfront with me. So I was expecting him to say that he was just trying to make me feel good about myself in the grocery store that evening or that he really had no interest in me or something along those lines. I replied and told him he could be honest with me and asked him if he was about to hurt my feelings. He said he didn't think so, however, he might offend me a bit. I told him to go ahead because I'm not easily offended. He wrote back and said he would like to get to know me better, but he's not looking for a serious relationship and he approached me because he liked how big my boobs are. Alrighty.<br />
<br />
I responded and said I was not offended because I realize my boobs are big. We ended up talking via text and a few phone calls off and on for the rest of that evening and he seemed like a fun guy. There were a few red flags going up for me, but he seemed safe to talk with. We chatted a couple of more times during the following week and then he asked me if I wanted to go to lunch one day. He is right down the street from my office so he said he'd pick me up and he did. And this is where things go bad.<br />
<br />
As soon as we pulled out of my building he said, "Damn! Look at that girl's boobs!" about a girl walking down the sidewalk. I looked at him and said, "Seriously? Did you really just say that less than 60 seconds into our first date?" He apologized profusely, but the damage was done.<br />
<br />
As soon as we sat down at a table in the restaurant he said, "Hey......flash your boobs at me." To which I responded, "You're insane if you really think that's going to happen." And he said, "Before too long you'll be flashing them at me without me having to ask." And I said, "That will not be happening. In fact, I can say with complete certainty that you are never going to see them in your lifetime." And that is when we moved on to safer subjects such as his acting career, past relationships, business ideas and stuff he's working on, etc. <br />
<br />
So while I think I can be friends with him and he's a pretty interesting guy, I can say that I am not interested in him romantically even a tiny bit. And I took it as a sign that maybe I just need to hold out for the HB situation to work itself out.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-60215655396698331642014-08-19T17:31:00.000-04:002014-08-19T17:31:17.748-04:00What I Did This Summer. Seriously? I really did all of this?Oh. My. Dog.<br />
<br />
This summer has just about worn me slap out, y'all. Imma try to recap my past few months:<br />
<br />
Mid-May I was out of town for a weekend at an aunt's house.<br />
<br />
Last weekend of May a cousin came in town from Fargo and I had her, her son, another cousin and her daughter and my aunt over to my house.<br />
<br />
The next weekend I spent most of the weekend with them before my cousin flew back home to Fargo.<br />
<br />
I cannot even remember what I did the next weekend because it seems like it was eleventy-billion years ago, but I know I had something going on because I've had stuff every single weekend.<br />
<br />
The next weekend I went to the One Fabulous Mama retreat which I wrote about eleventy-billion years ago which was the last time I've managed to post anything on here.<br />
<br />
The weekend after that I hosted a group of my friends from high school at my house for a potluck dinner on Sunday night. One friend lives in Texas now so she was flying in on Saturday and staying the night with me. I don't think I had seen her in almost 20 years since we were roommates for a summer in college. Her flight was supposed to get in at a completely reasonable time. Instead it didn't get in until 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning and I almost ran over a skateboarder when I went to pick her up because he flew out in front of me in the pitch dark wearing all black clothes because apparently he's the smartest man on the planet. We got to my house, slept a few hours, got up, did stuff to get ready for the dinner, tried to catch up on the past 20 years, then our other 5 friends arrived. One friend dropped a bottle of red wine in my driveway which shattered everywhere and another friend had accidentally left her lights on in her car and because we couldn't move cars around in my awfully skinny driveway for someone to jump her off, we had to call AAA to come rescue her and the driver took a bunch of group photos for us in my front yard. We all had a great time catching up, I realized I am the only one of us who is not married with kids (and truthfully I am totally ok with that), and the last friend left at almost midnight. Then my friend who was staying with me and I got up super early because we had to leave my house at 6:30 Monday morning so I could take her to the airport and get to work. And then I almost fell asleep on my desk most of that day.<br />
<br />
The next weekend my brother and I left to go visit my mom in Texas. We stopped for breakfast at some point and we were discussing our childhood road trips and how our dad loved to make us listen to Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings for 14 hours straight to Illinois and 14 hours straight on the way back home. And I made the stupid mistake of saying, "You know, now that I'm older I don't mind a little Willie" and my brother made fun of me for the entire week about that . (Think about it if you didn't immediately get it. And don't capitalize willie if you still don't get it.) On the way to Texas we stopped in Mississippi for several hours to visit an uncle who was very ill. <br />
<br />
While we were in Texas, we had to go the mall for something and my feet were killing me from the stupid plantar fasciitis because we had been walking all day long, so I told my mom and brother I was going to sit on a bench and rest for a minute while they went into some department store. Honest to goodness, y'all. I looked at the time when I sat down. I sat at the opposite end of a bench where a very normal looking lady was already sitting. I made no eye contact and didn't say a word to her. And I barely got my ass down on the seat before she started talking to me.<br />
<br />
"Oh man. I've only got 4 minutes left on my break," she said as she sighed heavily and licked her ice cream cone. I just politely smiled at her and said nothing.<br />
<br />
"I work here in the department store. I'm really tired," she shared with me. So I figured she must expect me to respond.<br />
<br />
"What time do you get off?" I asked her.<br />
<br />
She went on to tell me what time she got off, what time her shift had started, how the management expected way too much from them, all about her previous career with Target and how she had to quit that job because she was having back pain issues, then she shared with me all about her husband's health issues, then she told me about a friend who had a sick child and told me all about how the Swiners (she meant Shriners but said Swiners about a bazillion times) would help them but she can't convince her friend to ask for help. And seriously? How does this happen to me when I ask one very simple question? And then right in the middle of a sentence that she never finished, she looked at her watch and said, "Oh, my break is over now," and she stood up and walked away. And when my mom and brother walked back out, I looked at the time again and they had only left me alone for 6 minutes. And 4 of them were filled with crazy.<br />
<br />
The next weekend we drove back from Texas and stopped for several hours in Mississippi to visit my uncle again (he was in ICU by that point).<br />
<br />
<br />
The next weekend I hosted a bunch of my neighbors at my house to play cards on Friday night (I had never met any of them and we had the BEST time). One of them had so much fun she called me the next morning and asked if she could come back again on Saturday night and bring her sister and brother-in-law to play cards with me. She said she liked my house and I had good snacks. So I mowed my yard, cleaned house, did laundry and then hosted her again. And on Sunday my mom came in town to stay with me for almost a week.<br />
<br />
The next weekend I was in town and I wasn't hosting anyone at my house,
but I had to work on a gigantic commission painting the entire weekend
(I'm still not done with it).<br />
<br />
The next weekend several of the ladies I met at the OFM retreat back in June came and stayed for the weekend. A couple of others live local and they met us on Saturday afternoon for lunch and a little shopping in Little 5 Points. We had the best time! Until I fell down the stairs when I was helping one of them carry stuff out to her car. And honest to goodness I think I broke my wrist again. Yes, the same arm I broke last year. And the year before. I don't need anyone to tell me I should go to the doctor because I'm a grown woman and if it gets worse I will go. But mentally I really don't think I can handle being in a cast for the third year in a row. So I'm wearing a splint they gave me last year and I'm treating it very gently. I got bruised up pretty good (left thigh, left ass cheek, left boob) and it's now 2 weeks later and the bruises are getting better. I still have a goose egg on my left thigh and my wrist is still pretty swollen and after mowing my grass this past weekend I'm pretty much convinced it's broken. I will live. <br />
<br />
The next weekend I was supposed to host another event at my house on Saturday, but for a variety of reasons several people had to cancel so we decided to postpone it for a while until everyone can make it. I did go to an antiques show with a dear friend of mine on Sunday though. And sadly, my very dear and precious uncle passed away that weekend.<br />
<br />
So last week I took an unexpected trip to Mississippi in the middle of the week for a couple of days for his funeral. It was super sad. His son (my cousin) is a minister and he did the service. It was pretty dadgum emotional. The day before his funeral was when Robin Williams died and really, last week just sucked.<br />
<br />
Yesterday was my birthday. So my gift to myself was that I planned absolutely nothing for the entire weekend. I mowed my grass (which certainly did nothing good for my wrist), did some laundry, cooked meals for the week, finally got the sheets changed on the beds from when my OFM friends stayed two weekends before, did a little bit of cleaning, and also crashed on the sofa all afternoon Sunday and watched TV and took several short naps. The most important part of the weekend is that I never put a bra on.<br />
<br />
This coming weekend I'm hosting another card game. The next weekend Mrs. Oh is going to be in town so I'm getting together for dinner with her one night. And my mom is trying to convince me to then head out Saturday morning to meet her at my brother's farm in Kentucky since it's Labor Day weekend and I'll be off work that Monday. I'm honestly not sure I have it in me.......<br />
<br />
So in between that I have been working and I do not know what in sam hill is going on at my office, but this past few months is probably the busiest I've been in 7 years.<br />
<br />
And that, my friends, is what I did this summer.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-41251681385390115642014-06-20T17:28:00.000-04:002014-06-20T17:50:11.512-04:00A new tribe is bornOh my dog, y'all. I have been trying to get on here all week to update y'all on my fabulous weekend and that was a whole week ago. And I have another fabulous weekend coming up right now.<br />
<br />
I have been busy, busy, busy at work - overtime almost every single day even though we aren't supposed to have any. And I'm hosting an event at my house on Sunday night so every evening has been filled with running errands, cleaning, etc.<br />
<br />
Anyway, last weekend I went to the <a href="http://www.onefabulousmama.com/" target="_blank">One Fabulous Mama</a> retreat down in Nashville, Georgia. And I honestly don't know how to put into words how wonderful it was. Karen in VB.....you MUST figure out a way to go to the next one.<br />
<br />
Now, I'm not gonna lie. It started off a little frustrating. Karen in VB, I know you'll find this shocking, but I got good and lost trying to get to the place. We stayed at a hunting lodge and apparently Google maps was unable to determine that this place existed. Their website did not have a street number, just the street name, so my regular GPS would not help me. I pulled directions off on my laptop before I left Atlanta and it told me to get off I-75 in Tifton, and go 34 miles on Hwy. 82 E and then turn right on Hwy. 82 S and then some other stuff. I got off on Hwy. 82 in Tifton and I drove 34 miles and there was nowhere to turn. So I drove another 5 or 6 miles thinking that perhaps the mileage was just a little off on Google maps, and there still was nowhere to turn so I pulled off on the side of the road and decided to pull up the map on my iPhone.<br />
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It told me to turn around and go back 12.9 miles from where I'd come and turn on Hwy. 135.<br />
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So that's what I did.<br />
<br />
Once I turned on 135 I saw a sign saying I was headed towards Nashville so I assumed that although my laptop didn't, perhaps my iPhone had good directions.<br />
<br />
It did not.<br />
<br />
My phone then lied like a dirty bastard and told me to turn on Roberson Gaskins and then turn on June Hendley and so that's what I did. Because the website said this hunting lodge is on June Hendley Road. I passed two houses and one of those houses had 5 Confederate flags in the front yard. And both of those roads were dirt roads. Only it was more like super thick sand and it was not easy to drive on. It was mounded up in the middle of the road and scrubbing the bottom of my SUV and it would kinda jerk you around so you couldn't drive more than about 15 mph. I had about 1/3 of a tank of gas when I first got on the dirt roads.<br />
<br />
TWO HOURS LATER my gas light was on. I had to pee. I had to poop. And I was super frustrated. If anyone had told me it was possible to drive back and forth on the same dirt road for 2 hours I would have said they were crazy. But now I've done it my own self. I tried to call OFM and didn't get an answer and her voice mail isn't set up for messages. At some point I decided I probably needed to try and make it back to the main road, get some gas, and just go find a hotel. I was already late for dinner and I was ready to call it a day. My phone would tell me drive 4.6 miles NE. Then it would say drive 0.2 miles SW. Then 3.1 miles NE. And all I saw were trees no matter what direction I drove.<br />
<br />
This is what I saw for 2 long hours:<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1s2.0.0.1.1" height="640" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t34.0-12/10361081_807471059272541_2102816190_n.jpg?oh=7e2ad1913c0724bce59fd6e3b7a196e4&oe=53A61EE1&__gda__=1403425393_e6bfbaf3efe9655bbb73471a2c0d5981" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" width="480" /><br />
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At some point I passed two different cars. One was a lady in an SUV so we each squeezed over to the very edge of the road and passed. After I had turned around for the 38702435712489234th time, I passed an older gentleman and I flagged him down to stop him and ask for directions. I could tell he had no idea where the place was either. I kept driving and I eventually passed another dirt road which I had passed 94759475957 times already, and I saw the lady in the SUV had turned on that road and stopped. So I pulled up next to her, rolled down my window and she called out to me the most wonderful words I've ever heard: "Are you looking for the plantation?" "YES!" I screamed. <br />
<br />
She told me she was on the phone with OFM's assistant, (we'll call her Cutie Pie because she is) and to follow her. "My gas light is on and I have to pee SO bad," I over shared with her. She told me she had already pulled off the road, walked into a field and used a porta potty which she first kicked several times so she wouldn't get bit on the ass by a snake, and she was afraid a farmer was going to come out of a trailer and shoot her. I loved her immediately. "If you run out of gas, honk and I'll stop for you," she said.<br />
<br />
I followed her to a paved road (THANK YOU, JESUS!) and she pulled over again and told me that Cutie Pie was on her way to rescue us. Cutie Pie arrived like a knight in shining armor and said she had to go to a gas station to meet someone else who was really lost. "I have to get gas so this is perfect!" I said. I'm pretty sure Cutie Pie was way over all of us before the weekend started, but she didn't act like it if she was. She was wonderful and sweet.<br />
<br />
I think she had to drive and rescue 5 of the 9 of us because iPhone directions and Google maps sucked.<br />
<br />
We made it to the hunting lodge where every square inch of the walls was covered in dead animals. They even had candle holders made out of hooves, y'all. I threw my purse in my room, met my roommate (we'll call her The Chiro because she's a chiropractor), and since we were late for dinner, we ate. OFM's community made a potluck dinner for us and it was incredible! I then ran outside and took photos of the beautiful peacocks, the incredible zebras, and there were also emus, bulls, guinea hens, two cats, etc. The property is gorgeous. It's so peaceful there.<br />
<br />
Until the peacocks start screaming.<br />
<br />
Y'all. I have never heard a peacock before and it sounded like a lady screaming at the top of her lungs, "HEEEEEELLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!"<br />
<br />
Peacocks don't care if you stay up until 2:00 a.m. They think they should scream their bloody heads off at 6:00.<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1sq.0.0.1.1" height="640" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t34.0-12/10447295_807917032561277_941475928_n.jpg?oh=7f3b09cecb6310aa952463ff2bd3bd74&oe=53A668E3&__gda__=1403430974_a515acdc98f661da0f8c219924ef54d0" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" width="480" /> <br />
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We played a game to kind of break the ice and get to know each other after dinner. It involved sometimes having to sit in each other's laps. And the drinking started too. I actually stuck with Sprite and Ginger Ale, but 2 hours after we arrived, someone had to go buy more wine.<br />
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There was a screened in porch and we spent a lot of time out there over the weekend. By 10 or 11, most of us were bra free, in our pj's and already felt like we had known each other for a lifetime. We all talked, there were some tears shed, we shared dreams, struggles, fears, and also funny stories until we cried from laughing so hard.<br />
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On Saturday we toured Nashville and met some of OFM's sponsors. (One of the owners of one sponsor stayed with us for the weekend, Cutie Pie stayed with us, and two other locals were there all weekend. They are all awesome!) Two other locals came and spent the day Saturday with us. We had lunch at Pa's Country Meats and I stocked up on stuff there, we went to a thrift shop, we stopped in Dixie Sales and Graphics and bought personalized goodies, and one thing I bought was this mug which says "What we Say on the Porch, Better Stay on the Porch":<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1u6.0.0.1.1" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t34.0-12/10443668_807903502562630_1811609775_n.jpg?oh=b063ae1c0c959370cf5cd9dd81edf50d&oe=53A6A283&__gda__=1403426835_3325073b63c55525ed6a11204534b9d9" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" /><br />
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We also stopped in the Nashville Farmer's Market which was ADORABLE and I bought some barbecue sauce as a souvenir of the beginning of my weekend:<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1ui.0.0.1.1" height="640" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t34.0-12/10476259_810599362293044_755593206_n.jpg?oh=3292010e230543292c3cbdef7a638256&oe=53A650DC&__gda__=1403437633_d02bf5b046e6a508ce5aac276260ddf3" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" width="480" /><br />
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Here is the farmer's market:<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1uu.0.0.1.1" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t34.0-12/10449597_807872552565725_1253605601_n.jpg?oh=d0fcabbf965612252feafdda3cabb431&oe=53A64592&__gda__=1403432386_9c41fc1b77211243e9ac4effe12b6aba" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" /><br />
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We eventually made it out to Horse Creek Winery where we had a wine tasting and drank wine slushies (which are the bomb diggity if I'm being honest). They were prepared for us:<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1v6.0.0.1.1" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t34.0-12/10446448_807881222564858_1988650538_n.jpg?oh=5c71ed8e1faff772145887e3c507fbd4&oe=53A666A6&__gda__=1403412150_bd0b53406d3374a28c64bba3d6bf8fd8" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" /><br />
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I bought mix so I can make my own slushies at home:<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1vi.0.0.1.1" height="640" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t34.0-12/10446371_807905829229064_1661270325_n.jpg?oh=090fd4877186b4402c03f275eba6a87d&oe=53A6A0EE&__gda__=1403426686_27cb6d4c5fc7593701b2a1fc6d8d3cfe" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" width="480" /><br />
When we got back to the lodge, we were going to drink blueberry margaritas and pain killers (OMG, they are so yummy) and do this......an inflatable water slide:<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1vu.0.0.1.1" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t34.0-12/10474160_807789775907336_1816545173_n.jpg?oh=db703edb1733aa26c1edbaeec8df3831&oe=53A69E96&__gda__=1403395718_3afe550ca7d405a6104889b37101505b" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" /><br />
Sadly, the inflatable water slide had a bit of a gash in it. OFM's Mister came out with some duct tape but it was beyond repair so a bunch of grown women sat around in their bathing suits in a hunting lodge decorated with dead animals and drank a lot and we turned Catch Phrase into a drinking game which involved a few people doing shots out of a cap from the tequila bottle. I had a margarita because shots make me barf. <br />
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OFM had an art table set up for us so after a wine tasting, a gigantic wine slushie, a blueberry margarita and half of a pain killer, I painted pretty much the worst painting of my life but enjoyed every second of it with some new friends:<br />
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<img class="_4-od" data-reactid=".1wh.0.0.1.1" height="640" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t34.0-12/10405816_807994549220192_1279353440_n.jpg?oh=c698e388bd8105aa3ae22f72502be337&oe=53A66F1A&__gda__=1403431866_c6cbc535707bc4799fe5dc92531deab9" style="height: 653px; width: 490px;" width="480" /><br />
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We were supposed to all cook dinner together, but around 8 or 8:30 we all kind of said "F*&uck that, let's order some pizzas." We did have a nice salad because we are a healthy group of ladies.<br />
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There is a bunk house right next door to the lodge and the owner likes to have himself a Saturday night poker game in the bunk house. We saw the guys leave at some point. We were all out on the screened in porch when they left and eventually we were all liquored up, and somehow the subject of sex toys came up because OFM does sex toy parties (you may remember when I hosted one for her a couple of months ago and Amanda came to visit me and that whole weekend went not as planned because my niece ran over herself with her car and all that). Well, let's just say that the sex toy conversation got a bit loud and rowdy and it was full of laughter and we were all having ourselves a great time and suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I saw something. And I said to OFM, "Um, there is someone with a flashlight headed over here from the bunk house." And we all got quiet as a nice young man opened the door to the screened in porch to tell us the poker game was over and he was locking up and heading home. "So, have you been sitting outside all this time?" someone asked. He shyly nodded his head as he looked down at the ground. "Did you happen to hear what we were talking about?" I asked.<br />
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"Good night, ladies," he said as he kept looking at the ground and left.<br />
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So yeah, we gave that guy probably the best night he's had in a while even though he was sitting guard at a men's poker game.<br />
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By the time I left that lodge on Sunday morning, I felt like I had met 13 of the most wonderful friends that I will have for a lifetime. In fact, I think I'm getting together with one of them after work tonight! I can't believe how much I missed them after I drove off even though I had just met them less than 48 hours before. We are soul sisters and have built a tribe of fierce, strong, caring women.<br />
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It was a weekend filled with love.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-23595812588287838122014-06-03T12:09:00.000-04:002014-06-03T12:09:55.824-04:00I think it was the deodorant I was choosing that made him want meFor those of you who are friendly with me on Facebook, you may have seen that I had an interesting interaction while grocery shopping last week. Karen in VB mentioned in the comments of my last post that she wanted to hear more about it. <br />
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I vary the grocery stores I do my shopping in. I frequent Kroger, Publix and Trader Joe's. Last week I decided on Kroger. This is the same Kroger where a half-blind, drooling, homeless lady followed me all over the store asking me to buy her dinner one night (I did) and that was the same night a man was frantic to find Nutella because he had just recently tried it for the first time and he yelled to me as he waved his hands all around in the air like he just didn't care, "I NEED NUTELLA! WHERE IS THE NUTELLA? I JUST HAD IT FOR THE FIRST TIME AND.....I NEED MORE!" I couldn't blame him one bit. Nutella is good, y'all. <br />
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It is also the same Kroger where I asked an employee if she could help me find an item one night and she walked me all over the freaking store and never could find it. She said she had only worked there for about 8 months so she didn't know where everything was yet. (?) And then I saw her again later and told her I had finally found the item I was looking for and she pointed to her name tag, asked me to call their headquarters or go to their website or something and tell them how helpful she was because then she'd be in the running to win a new big screen television. Yes. Let me get right on the horn to tell them how helpful you were in dragging me all over the store for absolutely no reason since you never helped me find what I needed. <br />
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It is the same Kroger where I once overheard a man trying to impress a woman by telling her he had a super fancy bottle of champagne at his house and invited her over to share it with him. "I paid 28 BUCKS for that bottle!" said ol' Mr. Moneybags.<br />
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It is not, however, the Publix where I was walking through the produce section when a guy came running up from behind me, jumped in front of my face and exclaimed, "I think you are a lot like Wonder Woman!" before walking away. And it was not the Trader Joe's where a lady recently danced and sang and shook her moneymaker at me when I motioned for her to go ahead of me when we almost collided our buggies in an aisle.<br />
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No, it was Kroger.<br />
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I was almost done with my shopping when it all went down like this: I had just grabbed some beef from the meat department to make some stir fry and I was partially up an aisle right off the meat department where I was checking my list to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything before I grabbed some shampoo and deodorant and went to check out when I heard a man saying rather loudly from the direction of the meat department, "Do you own a restaurant around town?" My back was to the meat department by that time and I didn't turn around.<br />
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"Excuse me, young lady. Do you own a restaurant here in town?" he asked again loudly. I still didn't turn around because I don't own any restaurant.<br />
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"Young lady, where do I know you from? Do you own a restaurant around Atlanta?" I turned around to see exactly who it was that was annoying some poor "young lady" to discover the man was looking directly at me. And so I said, "Are you asking me?"<br />
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"Yes. Do you own a restaurant somewhere around town?"<br />
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"Um, no. I don't."<br />
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"Hmm. I know you from somewhere. You're in the music business, aren't you? "<br />
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"No, I'm not."<br />
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"Well, I think I've seen you performing around town, haven't I?"<br />
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"Uh, no. You definitely have not."<br />
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"Well where in the world do I know you from? "<br />
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"I have no idea. You don't look at all familiar to me."<br />
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"Stand right there, please. I want to come shake your hand and meet you," he said as several shoppers were standing in silence watching all of this go down. I stood there by the shampoo as he came up the aisle to where I was and shook my hand. He introduced himself and asked me for my name. He insisted again that he thought he's seen me performing my musical talents somewhere around town and I assured him I have no musical talent whatsoever. He asked me if I shop in that Kroger a lot and I told him I'm in there on a fairly regular basis and he said he's in there all the time so maybe he's just seen me in there. I told him I was sorry, but I felt like I had never seen him before in my life. He then said, "Well, it was nice to meet you." And he walked away. I turned my back again and started moving up the aisle a little further when I heard him coming up from behind me again saying, "You know what? I'm going to surprise you here." And I wish I had thought to say, "You're going to pay for my groceries?" but I wasn't that quick so I just stood there.<br />
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"I <i>am</i> in the music business," he said. "I'm an instructor and a performer." I told him that I'm pretty sure I'm un-instructable when it comes to music and he said he could probably teach me. I told him I paint from time to time so I have a creative outlet already. He went on to ask me if I've heard of a certain business and I told him I have heard of it. He told me they have a warehouse not far from the Kroger and on Saturdays he sometimes performs there and sometimes his students perform there and people come to watch and then they hire them to play at parties and events and stuff. He told me celebrities come by and hang out and local politicians visit regularly and no one bothers them and everything is super laid back and casual. And then he invited me to come sometime. He asked me if I had a business card. (I don't.) He then asked if I had a pen because he wanted to give me his card but wanted to write his personal email address on it. (I didn't.) He then asked a random lady walking past if she had a pen. (She didn't.) <br />
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"Are you going to be here in this aisle for a while?" he asked.<br />
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"Well, no, not for a while. I need to grab one more thing and then I'm checking out and I'm outta here," I replied.<br />
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"I'll find you," he said. "Like I told you, I'm in here all the time. The guys in the meat department know me very well and they'll have a pen I can borrow. I'll come find you in a minute."<br />
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And he walked off and I moved up the aisle a little further and I was picking up a thing of deodorant when he approached me for the third time.<br />
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"My god you're beautiful. Here's my card and I've written in my personal email address. Please email me. I want to get to know you. I'm begging you.....just email me," he said.<br />
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"We'll see," I said.<br />
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"Please. Please email me. I've got a few good years left and I want you and I to get to know each other really well over the years," he said.<br />
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"We'll see," I said again.<br />
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"Email me, please. I'm so glad I met you. Come out and listen to some music."<br />
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"We'll see. Have a great night," I said as I turned and walked away.<br />
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I told my brother (the cop) about it this weekend when he stopped by my house. He said he'd be glad to go with me to kind of check this guy out. <br />
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I waited about four days and then I emailed him last night. I told him I might come out and listen to him perform sometime and asked if I could bring a friend or two with me. He responded less than an hour later and said he'd love for me to come out and he was really glad to hear from me.<br />
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Now y'all, I have no desire to date this guy because I am guessing he is significantly older than me. But I think he could be a really fun friend to hang out with and get to know. I also don't really know what is going on with Hot Brazilian right now (it's a super long story that I don't really want to get into on here but I'm still committed to HB and until I know what is going to happen with that situation I don't plan to date Mr. Music Man or anyone else for that matter).<br />
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But that's a little story about getting picked up over a stick of deodorant.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-70817469035238720782014-05-27T16:59:00.002-04:002014-05-27T16:59:47.527-04:00I really need to throw away a certain pair of pantsY'all. It's kind of ridiculous how many times I say I'm going to write and then I just up and disappear. It's not on purpose. I just get busy. And too lazy and/or tired to write at night after I get home and do the bazillion things I have to do when I get home.<br />
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For instance, the last time I wrote on here which was Thursday a couple of weeks ago, I went to the mall after work (and I wish I could tell y'all how much I hate going to the mall but there are not words sufficient to describe my hatred) because the lady who sits next to me at work also has plantar fasciitis and she told me about some flip flops that people say are good when you have yourself some hurty feet. So I stampeded over there in my ugly ass shoes with the hard inserts in them because I wanted a pair of flip flops. Yes, even though that's how I broke my arm a couple of years ago and ended up in a body brace. I went and paid sixty-five damn dollars for some flip flops and, while they don't hurt my feet while I'm wearing them and walking around all day, my feet hurt like a mother-you-know-what the next morning. But I've worn them a few times anyway because I spent sixty five of my hard earned dollars on them. <br />
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Anyway, I got home late that night is what I'm saying because I battled the Buckhead traffic, spent some miserable time at the mall, bought some ridiculously priced flip flops, and then sat in more traffic to get home. I had decided on the way home that what I was craving for dinner that night was breakfast food instead of the chicken and vegetables I already had cooked that just needed to be heated up. <br />
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We are already having summer temps here in Atlanta and when I got home I was sweating like a snowman in a sauna, so I decided that I would run upstairs and put on my pj's and release the girls from my bra before I started cooking eggs and whatnot. Right before I ran upstairs (and I use the word "run" loosely) I set my home alarm system because I had no plans to go back out in the awful heat. Y'all, I took off my bra and put on the rattiest, most worn out white tank top you've ever laid eyes on and a pair of super thin, super comfortable pj bottoms that happened to have a giant hole in the crotch. I did not care because I felt a good ten degrees cooler.<br />
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I went back downstairs, pulled out a skillet, turned on the stove, and opened up a package of bacon. That's right. Bacon for dinner because I have given up all the white foods - bread, pasta, rice, processed sugar (except for Cake Day at our office once a month), white potatoes, etc. because I need to lose 8 million pounds - but I did not give up bacon. I had just put two slices of bacon in the pan when my cell phone rang. As my cell phone rang, I heard sirens coming up the street but that happens multiple times a day so I thought nothing of it.<br />
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I didn't recognize the 800 number but I answered anyway and it was my alarm company calling to tell me that they were showing a fire alarm going off at my house.<br />
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"Um, no. There's no alarm going off. I'm standing in the middle of my house and there is nothing on fire, and there is no alarm going off in here," I told her.<br />
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She then said they had tried to call me a minute or two earlier and didn't get an answer (I had my cell phone upstairs with me when I was putting on my beautiful and fancy pj's and it did not ring and there was no missed call from them) so they had gone ahead and dispatched the fire department and then she asked if I wanted them to try and cancel the call. I had a sinking feeling in my gut but I told her to try since, you know, MY HOUSE WAS NOT ON FIRE.<br />
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And that's when two fire trucks pulled up in front of my house with sirens wailing.<br />
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"OH MY GOD! IT'S TOO LATE! AND I HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW!" I screamed at her. "Two fire trucks full of probably hot firefighters just pulled up in front of my house and I am in a white tank top with NO BRA on. I have to go put a shirt on! Thanks for your help!" I yelled right into her ear. She laughed as she responded, "Okay....good luck to you."<br />
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And a firefighter was looking right into my front window as I ran up the stairs to go find a shirt. And this time I am not using the word "ran" loosely. I was hauling ass as fast as I could. But I'm fat so it really wasn't that fast at all. I didn't have time to worry about the giant hole in the crotch of my pants because by the time I found a t-shirt that vaguely matched those awful pants, the firemen were ringing my bell. So to speak.<br />
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I ran back down the stairs and I was huffing and puffing like I had just run a damned 10K, got my alarm system turned off, and then casually opened the front door as though I was expecting two trucks full of loud sirens and hot firemen to show up that evening while I was trying to make some dinner.<br />
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"Ma'am, your alarm company called us because you have a fire alarm going off," Hot Guy #1 starting saying.<br />
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"Yes, well, I'm sorry that y'all wasted your time coming out here because my house is not on fire and there is no alarm going off so I don't know why they are showing that it is. I just turned the stove on and I haven't even had time to burn my dinner yet. Y'all are early!"<br />
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He cracked up. And then I yelled, "OH MY GOD! My stove is on! Can I please run in and turn it off before we finish up here?"<br />
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Hot Guy #2 said, "Yes, ma'am. Please don't burn your house down while you're standing on the front porch talking to the fire department. That would be really bad." I told Hot Guy #2 that I agreed with him 100% on that.<br />
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So I ran back in and turned my stove off and when I walked back out to talk to all of the hot firefighters hanging out with me, I saw one of my neighbors walking up to check on me. "I'm fine!" I yelled to him. Then Hot Guy #1 said, "Wow, this is a really nice house you have. And it's huge!"<br />
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"Do y'all know ___________ and __________?" I asked them. The contractors I used when I first bought my house are full time firefighters with the City of Atlanta and they own a contracting business on the side.<br />
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"Oh yeah, I know them" about 3 or 4 of the hot firefighters said. "_________ is over at Station 13 now," Hot Guy #1 said. I told them they had done a bunch of work on my house and we discussed what all they had done. That's right, y'all. I stood on my porch with a hole in the crotch of my pants and with no bra on and talked about home remodeling with hot firefighters while my bacon was in a pan getting all soggy. Because that's just a typical Thursday night for me.<br />
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I asked them if they needed to check my house and they said as long as I didn't smell smoke and there was no audible alarm going off they did not need to check anything. <br />
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They left after a few minutes and I went in and finished making bacon and eggs. <br />
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Y'all know this now means that in the past two and a half months I have almost gotten arrested by the police in a county just outside of Atlanta, had the Atlanta police show up at my house because someone emailed them and said I had a huge cat fight going on at my house when I was actually in bed watching Everybody Loves Raymond re-runs, and the fire department showed up because apparently a silent fire alarm was going off in my house. And I had a hole in the crotch of my pj bottoms for two of those incidents. That's right. Same pants both times.<br />
Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-79589884601338482362014-05-08T17:59:00.000-04:002014-05-08T17:59:53.840-04:00The one where I tell you how my house was about to fall down.Oh. Hey, y'all!<br />
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Has it really been 3 weeks since I wrote something on here? I've been kind of busy, yo.<br />
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So 3 weeks ago I told y'all I was having a bunch of work done to my house. (Again.) I had my deck refinished last June and huge chunks of the paint (it's not really a normal paint - it's stuff meant to restore old decks) had started coming off. My contractor looked at it and said he's used the same product on other decks and has never had that happen so he would re-do it for free. He has been more than fair on a ton of stuff he's done on my house so I told him since it's not his fault, I would pay for the product if he would provide the labor at no charge because I didn't want to take advantage of him. (I think this was a good move because he then gave me a really good deal on something else that happened which I will tell you about in a minute). So on the Wednesday before Easter, he and his crew came out to spend the day working at my house and one of them repainted my deck. And on Easter morning, my mom's husband went out to blow my deck off because I had 25ish people coming over, and chunks of the finish blew off again. Sigh. So my contractor came back out again yesterday and worked on it some more at no charge to me. And how much do I hate my deck right now? A lot.<br />
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I also had to have my front door replaced. Did I already tell you I had gone through 3 deadbolts in 2 years and my contractor discovered my front door was the wrong size, was probably an interior door, the door frame was not done correctly, the door was sagging and out of alignment, etc.? Well, when he took the old door down and then took the frame out to re-do it, he discovered that all underneath my door, the wood was rotted out from water damage. And the frame halfway up the wall was rotted out from water damage. So he spent two and a half days putting in my new door because he had to replace all of that.<br />
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I trust him with my life so I leave him there when I'm not home because I would hardly work a day in my life if I had to stay home every single time something was wrong with my house. He has the code to open my security gate and to get in my garage. And one evening he called me and said his whole day had gotten off schedule and even though it was 7:00 he was still going to come to my house and get a couple of hours of work done. I was standing in the middle of the grocery store when he called and a marching band had just come in, played a little song and left (for real) and I told him I would be home within an hour and would see him when I got there. Not 15 minutes later, the guy who just installed my security cameras and gates called me and said, "Beverly! There are some guys at your house! Do you know there are guys at your house? I just saw them on my phone!" I had been having some issues with the DVR and he and the camera company had been working on my equipment remotely that day and he just happened to log on to make sure everything seemed to be working when Tim had shown up. So I told him, "Oh yeah, that's Tim that you met," because these past few weeks I've had so much crap being done to my house that my contractors have been meeting and exchanging business cards with each other on my front porch. Anyway, once I got off the phone with my contractors and finished my grocery shopping, I went home and I was standing on the front porch talking with Tim while he was working on the front door and I noticed when he stepped right inside the front door, I could see the floor of my entryway kind of sag down and I decided that was probably not a good thing and was probably an expensive thing and I was right on both accounts.<br />
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So the day before Easter and the day before I had 25 people coming to my house, he and his crew were at my house cleaning out gutters, installing gutter guards, finishing up insulation work, and he was still working on my door. He and his guys went up under my house and came back out with a beautiful picture. It was a picture of one of the main support beams under my house which sits on top of the foundation and holds up a bunch of other support beams and it was also completely rotted out from water damage. I said, "Oh crap, Tim. How much are we talking to fix this?" and he said, "Miss Beverly, I don't even want to go there because it's going to make you want to cry. But I'm trying to think of a less expensive way to fix it."<br />
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About 20 minutes later, he came in and said, "Okay. Here's the deal." Whenever someone says "here's the deal" I always know bad news is probably coming. "To do this the technically correct way, we need to jack your house up, remove that beam and replace it. And that would be about $6,000." And I almost fainted on the floor. "BUT! We're going to do it not technically the correct way, but it will still fix the problem. It's simply a much more cost effective way." My mom's husband was standing there and I'm glad because what he told me they were doing made no sense whatsoever to me, but my mom's husband said it did to him and it should fix the problem just fine and last for another 100 years. But most importantly he told me that if I had called him out just for that one issue, he would charge me $1,500 but since he knew all of the crap I've been through with my house since he's fixed the majority of it, and he knows how much money I've spent, and he knows I'm one of his excellent customers and he knows that I'm going to have 500 more things break in my house that I'll call him for and because he was already at my house doing a few thousand dollars worth of work on other stuff, he would only charge me $1,000 to do whatever it is he did to shift the weight of my entire house.<br />
<br />
And that's a little story about how the day before I had 25 people coming to my house I ended up having guys on my roof, guys in my crawl space, guys finishing up a new front door, and guys shifting the weight of my house so it won't cave in.<br />
<br />
I'm going to try to write again tomorrow. Pinky swear! Tonight I'm going to go try to buy YET MORE SHOES to try and help my stupid feet.<br />
<br />
(I haven't even had time to proof this so probably lots of typos and mistakes.) Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-91384531656799308222014-04-15T16:35:00.001-04:002014-04-15T16:49:34.177-04:00And I've now had my second run in with the cops in the span of a month or so. So I mentioned my latest crazy story on BBP and on Facebook, but here's all the detail about it.<br />
<br />
Last Thursday night, I was having my normal exciting night of running an errand or two after work, walking in my house completely exhausted, eating some little thing, doing a couple of things around the house that needed doing, and collapsing into bed.<br />
<br />
I had been in bed for a little while and I was watching re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond and starting to doze off and on because that's just how interesting my life is, when I suddenly thought I heard someone knocking on my front door. It's very hard to hear stuff on the back of my house where my bedroom is (the night two cars got totaled on the street in front of my house I heard nothing, nor did my mom or her husband who were in the guest bedroom which is on the back side of my house). But this wasn't normal, friendly neighborly knocking. It was urgent knocking and it sounded like they were hitting my stained glass front door with something. As I was trying to determine if I really was hearing knocking or if I was dreaming or hearing something on TV, I suddenly heard the doorbell ringing. And whoever was at my door rang it about six times. And then the knocking on my glass door started up again.<br />
<br />
"Aha!" I thought to myself. "I can flip my TV over to my security cameras and see who is knocking!" Little did I know that 4 days after I had cameras installed around my house they would come in so handy. My security guy was still working on them to do all of the networking stuff so I can see them from my phone, laptop, and tablet they were so newly installed, but luckily I could already view them on my TV. <br />
<br />
Imagine my surprise when I saw three men wandering around my front porch, shining flashlights into my windows, and picking up different items on my porch checking everything out carefully. I guess birdhouses and flower pots are the official hiding places for bad stuff. Then one of them turned and was facing a camera and I saw his police badge. And his guns. "What in the hell?" I thought because I'm just a middle-aged, severely overweight woman watching sit-coms in bed on a Thursday night at 10:40 p.m. and certainly hadn't called the police out to my house for anything.<br />
<br />
The knocking was continuing.<br />
<br />
I then looked at the camera pointing up my driveway towards the street where I saw an ambulance. "What in the hell?" I thought for the second time because I may be middle-aged and severely overweight, but I wasn't dying and had not called for medical assistance.<br />
<br />
As I went to the closet to put on my robe since I was wearing the most awful pajamas in the history of ever (a worn out, stained tank top and my pj bottoms had a giant hole in the crotch but oh my dog they are so comfortable so I keep wearing them) I thought to myself that maybe there was a gas leak in the 'hood and they were evacuating everyone or something. Or maybe something had happened out on the street in front of my house and they saw my cameras and wanted to see if it had recorded an incident (my neighbors had the police come to their house for that one time).<br />
<br />
I turned on the light on the staircase and as I walked downstairs there was an officer shining his flashlight into my dining room window. I got my alarm system turned off and opened the front door.<br />
<br />
One officer was standing right at the door. Another one was in the center of my front porch. A third one was standing at the bottom of the steps watching up and down my driveway. A fourth one was standing at my front gate with it closed (so no one could easily escape I suppose). <br />
<br />
"Ma'am, are you okay?" asked the officer.<br />
<br />
"I'm fine. What on earth is going on?"<br />
<br />
"Are you sure you're okay?"<br />
<br />
"Yes, I'm sure. I was in bed almost asleep. May I ask why you're here?"<br />
<br />
"Are you alone, ma'am?"<br />
<br />
"I am."<br />
<br />
"Are you sure?"<br />
<br />
"Unless someone broke in and my alarm system didn't go off then I'm sure I'm alone."<br />
<br />
"And you are positive that you aren't injured?"<br />
<br />
"I'm 100% sure that I'm not injured. What is going on?"<br />
<br />
"Someone from Forsyth sent us an email and said we needed to send an ambulance and officers to this address because there is a large group of women fighting each other."<br />
<br />
"Um, WHAT?! I can assure you there is nothing of the sort going on here. I'm fine, I'm alone, and y'all are more than welcome to come search my entire house if you need to verify that there are no women in here fighting."<br />
<br />
"So, there's nothing happening?"<br />
<br />
"No sir. Again, I welcome you to search my house if you need to. Who would do this? Was it an email from someone in Forsyth COUNTY or Forsyth the city?"<br />
<br />
"I'm not really sure ma'am. Our dispatch would have to confirm that."<br />
<br />
"And you're positive they said my address?"<br />
<br />
He then asked me to confirm my street address and his partner looked on some sort of device at the call they received and he confirmed my address was the one reported.<br />
<br />
"Well, I just had security cameras installed and the guy is still working on them so I'm not even sure how it all works yet, but if you want to see if we can figure out how to review the recorded footage, maybe a huge cat fight was going on out in the street in front of my house?"<br />
<br />
"No, ma'am. The email said a big group of women were fighting inside your home." <br />
<br />
"I'm so sorry someone wasted your time having you come to my house. Thank you for checking on me, but I promise there is nothing interesting going on here and I am fine. I was in bed watching Everybody Loves Raymond not doing anything remotely exciting."<br />
<br />
He laughed. <br />
<br />
I then flipped on my overhead light in the living room which is right next my entryway and again told them they could come in to look around if they needed to. The officer stuck his head in the door and looked around, said everything looked like it's in place and asked me once again if I was absolutely sure I was okay and didn't need any assistance.<br />
<br />
I opened my robe, looked down at my hoots and said, "Nope, everything seems to be okay."<br />
<br />
He laughed, wished me a good night and they walked away.<br />
<br />
How weird is all of that?<br />
<br />
The next morning I called the Atlanta Police Department and asked if I needed to get a copy of a report for any reason and they told me since the police came and checked on me and I told them I was okay, there would be no report. "But what about the fact that someone made a false report?" I asked them. "We don't investigate those." When I see my brother, the cop, and about 5 of his cop friends this weekend I'm going to ask them if they investigate them in the suburban city they all work for. My guess is either someone transposed some numbers and maybe there was a bunch of women fighting somewhere but the wrong address was reported or maybe some kids out on Spring Break got really bored and decided to play an awful prank and randomly chose my address. <br />
<br />
My security camera/gate guy called me when I was driving to work the next morning and I told him all about it. He was as shocked as I was. He was at my house most of the day on Saturday and part of Sunday working on my system and he found the recorded footage of everything. I think he watched it 3 or 4 times because he couldn't believe it.<br />
<br />
I may be spending a small fortune on gates and cameras, but I can't tell you how happy I was that I had it last Thursday night so I could see it wasn't someone meaning to do me any harm who was banging on my door.<br />
<br />
Next up on my home adventures list: This week I'm getting my deck repainted even though I just did that last June (there is a story about that), I'm having tons of insulation put in my crawlspace and attic space (there is a story about that), and I have to have a new front door put in (there is a story about that too and no, the police didn't break it banging on it the other night). And my mom and her husband are coming from Texas on Friday while all of that is going on. And I'm having 20 people at my house on Sunday for Easter/my brother's birthday so I have to prepare for a party while contractors are working. And I have to put together a ton of Easter eggs for a bunch of kids to hunt. And I have to go buy my brother a present this week one night. And buy a ham. And a birthday cake. And a lot of other food. And I volunteered to put together a whole bunch of gag gifts from my mom and I since my brother is turning 50 because apparently I thought I would have time for that kind of nonsense. And let us all pray the weather is nice on Sunday so I can put some people outside on my deck to eat. And let us all pray the paint is dry by then.<br />
<br />
Please send wine. Gallons of it. I think I'm gonna start drinking soon.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-41857014885568394542014-04-08T17:02:00.000-04:002014-04-08T17:02:42.207-04:00She really is fabulous.First, an update on my niece. The hospital released her around 6:00 last night so she is at home now. I just sent her a text a little while ago to check on her and see how she was feeling. She responded and said she is feeling amazing! She got out of the house for a little while today, got her hair washed, and has been sitting up a lot. She is one blessed young lady. <br />
<br />
My posts about this weekend are coming to y'all in an order that is anything but the order stuff happened in. Yesterday I told you about part of Friday and Saturday. Now I'm gonna tell you about different parts of Friday and Saturday. Just try to keep up, okay?<br />
<br />
Do most of y'all know who One Fabulous Mama is? If not, <a href="http://www.onefabulousmama.com/" target="_blank">check out her blog</a>. Here she is on my porch and my friends hanging out listening to her share her story:<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
One Fabulous Mama and her friend, Mandy, arrived at 6:00. She brought me a beautiful floral arrangement, some lotions and goodies, and a coffee mug:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Y1OgouBsOyEjEgKhIZdzoAWFUGF-80vjpPGGFRSq3kh2wZz1wjzaNmLNhfyhrouKw46sm5mSu8nvjl7Fy3cJYohsyGNBasTXSsbUafhfV6tpEAMJFwO8CDaEwoofIIS8fOaC5ebFYuCM/s1600/flowers+from+OFM.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Y1OgouBsOyEjEgKhIZdzoAWFUGF-80vjpPGGFRSq3kh2wZz1wjzaNmLNhfyhrouKw46sm5mSu8nvjl7Fy3cJYohsyGNBasTXSsbUafhfV6tpEAMJFwO8CDaEwoofIIS8fOaC5ebFYuCM/s1600/flowers+from+OFM.JPG" height="640" width="480" /></a></div>
<br />
I wish
every single one of you could meet her. This was the second time I've
met her and she just keeps getting more wonderful. She is one of the
most colorful yet down to earth, warm, welcoming, inspirational people I
have ever met in my life. After about 30 seconds, you don't see her
hair color (currently purple but sometimes it's pink or blue or blonde) or her tattoos. You see her soul. You see her spirit. You
see her self-confidence. You see her heart.<br />
<br />
In fact, a
bit into the party, some of us were sitting out on my front porch with
her chatting and one of my friends looked at me and said, "You know how I
am. Can I ask OFM a question or will I embarrass you?" I told OFM I
had no idea what my friend might possibly ask but to feel free to say
she didn't want to answer if she didn't want to. My friend asked her to
tell her story of how she went from a mom wearing plaid dresses and short "mom" hair to the lady with purple hair and covered in tattoos. So she did. We all sat there and listened in silence
and a bit of awe. (In a nutshell, the purple hair and tattoos are who she really is on the inside and she finally decided to stop living her life to make everyone else happy and she stopped hating herself. And she now looks at herself in the mirror and says, "You are absolutely adorable!" And she is freaking adorable, y'all. And her husband and kids think so too.) My friend then said to her, "One of the main reasons I
came tonight is because I see the stuff you write online. I see your Facebook posts. I see the
photos you post. And I wanted to meet you in person so I could see if
you're just full of bullshit. You are not. You are completely who you
are online. I am so happy I met you. You are refreshing and absolutely
amazing." My friend also wrote a very nice post about OFM on her own Facebook about how much she enjoyed meeting her.<br />
<br />
I had an opportunity to chat with her for a
little while one-on-one. She asked me one simple question that caused
me to share with her some kind of bad stuff I went through a long time
ago. She cried while I was talking with her. She told me she felt honored that people share their stories with her. She had suggested that we go to the <a href="http://clermontlounge.net/" target="_blank">Clermont Lounge</a> after the party was over but as she and I were talking she said, "I know I suggested the Clermont, but to be honest I would much rather stay here at your house and just talk with you some more." But then 4 people walked in the room and our magical connection was interrupted. It did feel a little bit magical, y'all. I know that might sound dorky, but she just makes you feel good about yourself by being around her. Her soul shines.<br />
<br />
When
she first arrived at my house, she walked in the door and said, "You are
my people. I want to be friends with you on Facebook on my personal
page." She turned the corner into my kitchen and she gasped and
clutched her hands to her chest. She had spotted a tiny piece of
artwork I have from an artist I collect and follow online. It wasn't a
piece that jumps out at people. It was on a shelf with some other stuff
around it and it's only 8x8 inches in size. I showed her a couple of
other pieces I have from the same artist. She stood there with her
hands on her heart and said, "I met that artist one time. I can't
believe you know of her and collect her work. I was at the monastery
out in Conyers doing some meditation and she was there. I had never
heard of her before but for some reason she felt drawn to come over and
speak to me. She shared some stuff that she was going through and we
talked for a very long time. It was one of the most amazing moments
I've ever had. She told me she was an artist and we really connected.
And now here I am and you collect her work. I don't know what she was
doing at the monastery. In fact, I don't even know where she lives."<br />
<br />
I responded to her, "I can't believe she was at the monastery all the way out here in Conyers. She lives in Portland, Oregon."<br />
<br />
Those two were meant to meet.<br />
<br />
When I used to teach painting classes at the studio, our stuff was a certain "style" of art and I very much enjoyed painting those pieces and working there and teaching. But when it's just me, piddling around in my home studio, my "style" is much more similar to this particular artist OFM had met at the monastery. After everyone had left Friday night, OFM asked if she could see my home studio. She, Amanda, Mandy and I went upstairs and OFM and Mandy started going through every single painting in my studio.....which is probably in the neighborhood of a couple of hundred paintings or more. I told them not to feel like they had to look at everything and she said she wanted to. She got to one of my personal pieces (as opposed to the teaching ones) and she said how much she loved it so I told her I wanted her to have it. I ended up giving her 5 paintings and Mandy a couple. OFM asked me which style was more me. I told her it was the ones I do when I'm just painting for me and not the ones I painted when I used to teach. She looked at me and said, "I knew that." <br />
<br />
OFM and Mandy spent the night at my house that night. I KNOW! How lucky am I??<br />
<br />
We were planning to go to breakfast the next morning, however, we didn't all go to bed until after 2:00 a.m. and by the time they woke up and packed they didn't have time because she wanted to take Mandy to IKEA and they were heading to a thrift store and then she had another sex toy party scheduled for that evening. So I helped the two of them load up suitcases, sex toys, lube, stockings, wine, books, etc. (OFM has written a book and has her own wine label) into her mini-van, hugged them both and wished them well. She had pulled her car back behind my house where the garage is and Amanda's car was also back there and before we knew it, OFM was good and stuck trying to get turned around because my driveway is next to impossible to back out of.<br />
<br />
So there I was cornered between her van, my deck, the post for my new gate, and a thing hanging on the side of my deck that my garden hose hangs on. I mean I was sucking in my gut and had both feet turned out to the sides so she wouldn't run over my toes I was so plastered against my deck. And there she was wedged between the gutter on the corner of my house and the old crappy gate door on the opposite side. She couldn't back up. She couldn't pull forward. Until she decided to just pull forward and scrape the hell out of the side of her van and dent my gutter a bit. I was way more worried about her van than a dent in my gutter. Oh, y'all. I felt just awful about it. I told her to tell her husband that someone did it while she was inside IKEA because I'm all about encouraging people to tell their husband giant lies. <br />
<br />
And then OFM and Mandy were gone just like that. It was a whirlwind evening/morning but I adore that woman. <br />
<br />
I hope you all get a chance to meet her at some point. Karen in VB was so sad she couldn't come down this weekend. If I ever have her at my house again I'll be sure to let you know, Karen. Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-9813437388310393672014-04-07T17:10:00.000-04:002014-04-07T17:10:06.800-04:00Well. That didn't go as I had planned. At all.Poor Amanda.<br />
<br />
Amanda came to Atlanta this weekend to stay with me and thought we would have a party, do some touristy things, and eat at some good restaurants. We did have a party. And that's about all we did on her list.<br />
<br />
(I'm not sure if y'all have ever picked up on this, but my plans seldom go off without a hitch or like I think they're going to.)<br />
<br />
She had some delays trying to leave to come down on Thursday, so she didn't arrive at my house until sometime between 10:00 and 11:00. Around 1:00 a.m., I started saying we probably should go to bed because I had to get up early because I had two contractors coming to my house on Friday morning. We finally stopped talking and went to bed at 4:00 in the morning.<br />
<br />
Guess what?<br />
<br />
I'm way too old to stay up that late.<br />
<br />
I also am a terrible sleeper, so I was wide awake by 6:30 and got up at 7:00 a.m. and tried to be very, very quiet so I wouldn't wake Amanda up since she was right across the hall from me. She said she never heard me so one thing in my life went according to plan. Go, me.<br />
<br />
The guy who is installing my new gates and security cameras arrived Friday morning and he said he thought he would get the cameras done that day. He worked from 9:30 - 6:30 on Friday. He worked from 9:30 - 3:00 on Saturday. He worked from 10:00 - 5:00 on Sunday. He'll be back next Saturday.<br />
<br />
(I'm not sure if y'all picked up on this, but the security guy's plans didn't go off without a hitch or like he thought they were going to.)<br />
<br />
My regular contractor also came by because, and I know this will come as a surprise...I have some stuff going wrong with my house. I've replaced 2 deadbolts on my front door in 2 years. Now a third one has broken. Now I have to buy a new front door and have it installed. It turns out the front door that was put in by the previous owner was not done correctly. It should have been 36" wide. Instead it's 30" wide. The door jamb was not put in properly. Nothing is aligned correctly. My contractor said the lady apparently tried to custom fit a door but failed miserably. Amanda and I were talking and the stain glass on the front door matches the stain glass in a transom window inside the house so the door was probably originally an interior door that she moved. And now I'm gonna have to pay a bunch of money to fix it.<br />
<br />
I have paint cracking throughout my house on bead board and paneled doors. My contractor believes it's because I have no insulation in my crawl space and very little insulation in the attic space. So I'm gonna have to pay a bunch of money to fix that.<br />
<br />
I have two outlets that don't work on my deck because the wire has been cut in the crawl space. (It's been like that since I bought the house. It's not another security issue.)<br />
<br />
I need my gutters cleaned.<br />
<br />
My deck that he refinished last June is messed up (the paint is coming off). At least that won't cost me anything because he stands behind his work.<br />
<br />
One of my neighbors wanted to meet with him so I walked down the street to introduce them.<br />
<br />
Amanda and I ran around all afternoon getting food prepared for my sex toy party on Friday evening. I warned my security camera guy that he might want to be gone before 6:00 because a lady with purple hair and a bunch of tattoos was arriving at that time with cases full of vibrators and lube. And then around 7:00 my house was going to be full of women. I'm kind of surprised he showed back up on Saturday.<br />
<br />
In the middle of all of this activity, my brother called me. He said he'd tried my work number but I didn't answer so he decided to call my cell phone. I said, "I'm off work today because I have two contractors here at my house, company from out of town who arrived last night, I'm having my sex toy party tonight, I have more company spending the night tonight, and I will have a houseful of people here in a few hours so I'm in the middle of preparing a bunch of food."<br />
<br />
"Oh. That's right," he said as though all of this was even a tiny bit normal.<br />
<br />
He went on to tell me that my niece/his daughter (16-years-old) was in the hospital because she had run over herself with her own car. For real.<br />
<br />
They have two dogs which are of decent size and they are ill behaved and not trained. They had both escaped from the house so my niece jumped in her car to go drive around their neighborhood to look for them. She saw a neighbor out walking her tiny dog on a leash. My niece stopped to speak with her to see if she had seen the dogs running around. As they were talking, her two dogs came running up towards them. My niece was afraid her dogs would attack the neighbor's smaller dog so she jumped out of the car to try and grab them, but forgot she had not put her car in park. As the car started rolling, she tried to get back in but the door hit her, knocked her down, she was dragged down the street, she finally had to let go and the back tire rolled all the way over her down the left side of her body. The car kept going, went through two yards where it eventually rammed through someone's garage and into a closet where it finally stopped.<br />
<br />
The neighbor called 9-1-1 and apparently it is normal procedure when a minor is involved in a serious car accident that they get air lifted to the hospital so they flew her by helicopter to a hospital in Atlanta. She has a very deep puncture wound to her ankle, severe road rash down both legs and on her bottom, a liver laceration, and a partially collapsed lung. They took her into an operating room but I don't know that you'd call what she had an actual surgery. The wound on her ankle was cut roughly so they put her under, had to cut it a little more to have clean lines so they could get it to heal properly, they irrigated the wound so it would be clean and hopefully not get infected, and then put staples in it. Both legs are bandaged because of road rash, and they put a chest tube in to re-inflate her lung. Her liver seems to be doing okay at this point but they still don't have the lung where they want it to be. Right now we're waiting to see if she will be released this evening.<br />
<br />
So instead of going to the Margaret Mitchell House or the art festival we had thought about going to, Amanda got to go to the hospital on Saturday afternoon and meet part of my family. <br />
<br />
While we were there, they decided to take the chest tube out so we stepped out into the hall while they were working on that. Her room is the last room at the end of the hall so there was a big window there and we stood in front of it. About 30 seconds after walking out in the hall, a gun battle broke out in a park across the street from the hospital. We saw about 20 people running from the scene. Nurses, doctors, etc. came down to watch out the window with us. My brother came out of my niece's room when he heard the gunshots and because he's a cop he told us we might want to not stand in front of the window while people are shooting at each other. Good point.<br />
<br />
After we left, Amanda wanted to stop in Trader Joe's so we did that and it was 6:00 p.m. and all I had eaten all day was four M&Ms because I'm the healthiest eater that ever was. I was starving so we stopped at Roasters because I was about to pass out and I ate chicken fingers, a sweet potato, and some green beans because I'm sort of healthy but not all the way. I scarfed it down. We were both exhausted so we decided to go back to my house and just chill.<br />
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And as we sat out on my front porch in the middle of Atlanta, we heard a monkey at a neighbor's house. I have no idea what neighbor around me has a monkey because I've never heard it before, but we both heard it plain as day.<br />
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So yes, Amanda thought we would have good tours, good art and good food. Instead she experienced contractors, a grocery store, visiting someone in the hospital, and Roasters.<br />
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Tomorrow I will tell y'all about the party and how One Fabulous Mama almost ran over my feet with her mini-van and she slightly damaged a part of my house. Apparently we were trying to be like my niece. On a much smaller scale.<br />
<br />Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-13832841248729351852014-03-25T12:43:00.001-04:002014-03-25T12:43:22.332-04:00The boogie manAnd now for the latest in my dumb life......<br />
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I think someone tried to break into my garage and possibly my house last week.<br />
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I drew y'all the most awesome picture in the history of ever to try and explain all of this. You are welcome.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOZxyBv4XpZSXhWEzCJJL8SqWTymheVR7AIPVi-hdBpo9AH54KwAmMl19adYGf0gJBrFGoMHVibTCQCia-tBae3PZCpgmsK7x_w0xxLAN14ULQh3Ye2HzNdUHcRXTVhe60zk0Oc-Vg4N4a/s1600/house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOZxyBv4XpZSXhWEzCJJL8SqWTymheVR7AIPVi-hdBpo9AH54KwAmMl19adYGf0gJBrFGoMHVibTCQCia-tBae3PZCpgmsK7x_w0xxLAN14ULQh3Ye2HzNdUHcRXTVhe60zk0Oc-Vg4N4a/s1600/house.jpg" height="640" width="494" /> </a></div>
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My property is completely fenced in. And unlike my incredible picture above, the fence on the right side doesn't curve. It's straight. Anyway, when I get home I drive down the world's skinniest driveway and have to pay close attention because if I move approximately two inches too far to the left I will hit the side of my house. If I drive approximately two inches too far to the right I will crash into some columns or into my fence. (This drawing isn't accurate enough for you to tell all of that by looking at it.) Then I get to my two crappy gate doors at the back edge of my house and I can't move 1/2 inch too far either way or I will crash my car. </div>
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I've had problems with those gate doors since I bought my house. I had some guys work an entire day on them to try to put extra support on the posts holding them up because they were sagging so bad they dragged on the ground. And now they are sagging so bad again that I can't close them because one has sagged more than the other so the latches on each door don't come close to lining up with one anther. So I leave them open all the time and I have to prop them open with bricks because they swing all willy nilly. After I get through the willy nilly gate doors, I pull into my detached garage.</div>
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I didn't draw this in my beautiful picture either (I'm starting to wonder why I drew a picture for y'all at all), but my garage is a two-car garage and it has a storage area in it. There is the big rolling door that you drive in and out of and you can access the storage area from inside the garage or there is a regular door with a dead bolt and door knob you can use to access the storage area from outside. I think I've opened that door about 3 times ever. Which is why I have a giant trash can sitting in front of it.</div>
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When I left for work last Thursday, as I was backing out of my garage I noticed the handle of the trash can was visible in my rear view mirror and it's normally not. I got out of my car to check things out and the trash can had clearly been moved and there was a cigarette butt on the ground in front of my garage. I know I haven't taken up smoking so it's not mine, and I haven't had anyone over recently who smokes. When I got to work, I immediately contacted my awesome neighbors who have been after me for two years to contact their guy to get a remote put on my crappy gate doors so that I can close them other than when I'm driving in and out. They've also been after me to put cameras around my property. My brother the cop has been after me to do all of this as well. Because I live in the 'hood and we have a lot of crime. I called their gate/remote guy and he said he could come out on Saturday to look at my property and give me an estimate.</div>
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I had to work late that night so it was dark when I got home and I didn't notice anything else.</div>
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On Friday I had to leave work early because they have started coming down on us about overtime so I got home when it was still light out and I decided I was going to work on a couple of spray painting projects. I walked out to the garage so I could get some cardboard to put under my stuff while I spray painted my little heart out. I have a keypad to open my garage door and when I went to it, the cover was open. I never leave the cover open because I had to pay good money to have a new keypad put in last year because the cover was missing from the prior one when I bought the house, and the whole thing had corroded from rain, etc. I put my code in and the door wouldn't open. I put the code in again and it still wouldn't open. I then hit the star key and it opened but I have never had to hit the star key before. So I think someone had been trying to hack their way in using the key pad. After that, it seemed to work fine with just my code.</div>
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A little later I went back up on my deck and was about to open up one of my french doors to go in my sun room when I saw a partial hand print on the glass. The reason it stood out to me is because it was about 3 fingers worth in a white powdery substance. I really don't ever touch the glass when I go in and out of the door and I knew I hadn't had white powder on my hands. Luckily when you look in that door, you would probably see the motion detector from my alarm system up in the corner of that room (especially if you're a criminal looking for stuff like that before you possibly break into a place). And if you look in the other french door on my deck you can see an alarm system control panel. After seeing all of this stuff, I was feeling really glad that the gate/remote guy was coming the next day.</div>
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He arrived at my house Saturday afternoon and I walked down the driveway with him to show him my existing crappy gate doors and as soon as he hit the corner of my house and could see in my back yard the conversation went a little something like this:</div>
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"WHAT? THIS IS HORRIBLE BACK HERE!!"</div>
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"Um, I know I need to cut the grass and weeds. I'm planning to do that next weekend."</div>
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"NO, NO, NO!" he yelled. "That's not what I mean. Look at all of the blind spots back here! I HATE BLIND SPOTS! We need to fix this and fix this soon! Someone could be hiding behind your garage. They could be on the side of the garage. They could be under your deck, down this little "alley" running down the side the house. THIS IS TOO DANGEROUS! The garage should never have been built where it is. It should have been put in the very far back corner so no one can be hiding around the side or back. Why would anyone put a garage here? You live here alone and come home to this every single night by yourself??"</div>
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"Well, um, yes. Yes, I do."</div>
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"I would never allow my wife to get out of her car into a situation like this even if I was inside the house," he told me. "Aren't you scared?"</div>
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"Not really. Until now anyway."</div>
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"I don't understand why you young ladies live alone in neighborhoods like this."</div>
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"Because these are the neighborhoods we can afford houses in when we're buying house on our own," I mumbled. </div>
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So we talked for a while and I told him I was fully expecting him to tell me that my crappy gate doors need to be thrown in a trash heap and that I need a new door. And he told me he's glad I already knew that and he said he could put a remote on the existing doors but he would just be stealing money from me if he did that because I would then be calling him every couple of months to come out and fix them. So we agreed I need a brand new gate with a remote because it's better to do things right the first time.</div>
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He then asked me if I've thought about installing cameras around my property and I told him I've been looking at them online and asked if he does that too and he does. So I told him to include that in his quote. We discussed how cameras are one of the biggest deterrents for crime you can have because criminals do not like them. He said between cameras, my alarm system, signs saying I have an alarm system, and the closed gate, someone would really have to want to get in my house rather than going to hit an easier target. He's going to put in the same camera system he has at his own house and that he just installed in his neighbor's house. So for those of you who come to my house for Pie parties, don't pick your underwear out of your butt or pick your nose when you're walking up to any of the doors because I will probably see you doing it.</div>
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He then asked if he could come back by on Sunday with his welder so the welder could take some measurements and see the property and where the gate would be installed, etc. and I told him that would be fine. About an hour after he left, I was in my kitchen when I heard something repeatedly whacking against the bay window in my living room. I looked in the living room and saw a bird flying into the window over and over again and then it disappeared. I ran over to look and see if it had been hurt and fallen on the ground, and as I looked out I saw that the fence on the front corner of my house was pulled away from my house and the side fence. It's not something I would have noticed because you really have to be looking at a certain angle to even see that section of fencing. (The bird was apparently fine by the way.)</div>
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When the gate guy came came back on Sunday with his welder, I showed them the fence that had been knocked away so they suggested I add another gate on that side in the scary "alley" running down the side of my house so that if someone kicked in that fence again they still won't be able to get in my back yard. The alley is not really an alley. It's just a very skinny strip between my house and the fence where the a/c units, gas meters, etc. are located.</div>
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My brother, the cop, came over Sunday night to help me put my new deck furniture together (LOVE) and then I took him out to dinner as a thank you. He nailed my fence back to my house for me and I showed him everything else and then I told him I need to get a job as a detective because I think I know who was messing around behind my house. </div>
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There was a crew putting in a driveway next door to me on Wednesday.</div>
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They would certainly have had a white powdery substance on their hands. They were also working right next to where the fence was knocked down at the front of my house. Also, they saw me leaving for work that morning because they had just arrived and had parked on the street in such a way in a large truck that I had a very hard time getting out of my driveway without hitting them and they all stood there and watched as I inched and inched out.</div>
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When I got home that evening they were still working and I walked over to see the driveway and check to see how close it is to my fence. They would hardly look at me. I was very friendly and told them how nice their work was looking, etc. and they barely glanced at me.</div>
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Anyway, I am going to live in Fort Knox by the time all of this stuff is done to my house. Unfortunately I will have not a penny left to keep inside of it because all of this is going to cost me a small fortune. So it will be more like Fort Poor. But I really do think it's going to give me so much peace of mind, that it's a great investment in my house, and that if I ever sell I will get my money back for doing all of this. But I may be eating ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches for a while. (Luckily the fake kids left three huge things of ramen noodles when they moved out.)</div>
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Yesterday I negotiated the cost of the gate down by $200 from the quote and felt a tiny bit bad-ass for doing so. And they should be installing everything next week. I'm glad because after that guy came to my house I was completely terrified when I got home at 9:00 last night because I took a little trip to Ikea after work. I was running up my driveway so whoever might be hiding in all of the blind spots wouldn't grab me. And I'm horribly out of shape so I couldn't breathe by the time I got inside. And the gate guy called me about 3 minutes after I got inside and I had to try and not be huffing and puffing while I was talking to him because I didn't want to have to tell him he scared me so bad that I ran up my driveway when I got home so the back yard boogie man/men wouldn't get me.</div>
Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-81939695226944243982014-03-21T12:56:00.001-04:002014-03-21T12:56:43.382-04:00Moby DickSo now I'll share with y'all my ridiculous battle with the water department. If we're friends on Facebook, you've already heard a bit of it, but here's the entire stupid, insane story.<br />
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Last Monday when I checked my mail, I had an envelope from the water department. And for those of you in the Atlanta area, if you ever watch the local news you already know just how messed up the City of Atlanta's water department is since there is a story on the news almost every week about them for the past 10 years (at least). <br />
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When you open an account with the City of Atlanta for water service, you have to drive downtown to city hall, get a number, sit in a run-down waiting area, fill out an application, and then wait to be called for someone to enter everything in their system and tell you if you've been approved or not. Yes. YOU HAVE TO APPLY IN PERSON and they only have one location for this circa 1972 way of doing business. Who does that anymore? The City of Atlanta does. And it's the dumbest thing ever. <br />
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When I lived in my last apartment before buying my house, I was in the city limits so I had done this ridiculous applying in person back in 2003. I had to take a half-day off work to get water service. I was miraculously able to transfer service to my house when I bought it without appearing in person, but I had to have my closing attorney fax a copy of a bunch of paperwork to them to prove I had bought my house. No other utility company required that, but the City of Atlanta water did. Because they are ludicrous. But not cool Ludacris, the rapper.<br />
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So I've lived in my house for 2.5 years and I've gotten a bill every month from the water department and my other utilities and I've paid what they told me to pay because I've grown to enjoy having lights, a/c, and to be able to flush my toilets and stuff.<br />
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But last Monday I had an envelope from the City of Atlanta water people and it was addressed to "Customer" because they like to personalize stuff apparently and it had my address with "Unit B" added to it. And it was a label that had been cut from a piece of paper and taped on the front of the envelope very professionally with all of their state of the art office technology. And then it had a fancy bright yellow star burst design with red letters in all caps saying "IMPORTANT MESSAGE REGARDING YOUR WATER SERVICE!" I figured they were raising their rates again even though <a href="http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2011/sep/23/carla-smith/atlanta-drowning-nations-highest-water-bills/" target="_blank">we already have some of the highest water and sewer rates in the whole entire country</a>.<br />
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But that's not what it was. The first line said, "We'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you as a new customer to the Atlanta Water System." Um. Thanks, City of Atlanta but I think your letter is a bit tardy since I've been a customer for 11 years.<br />
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The second sentence said, "To convenience you, we have left the water and or [no slash in between] sewer service active for your home." Then it said, "However, it is vital that you immediately make the necessary application for service in your name."<br />
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It went on to tell me that they STILL MAKE YOU APPLY IN PERSON at City Hall. I received the notice on March 10th and was told if I didn't apply in person by the 12th my service would be shut off. What the what?<br />
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I called the next morning and a customer service rep answered. I was very polite and told her I needed to straighten out an odd situation and I told her how I've lived in my single-family home for 2.5 years and how I've been a customer of theirs for 11 years and I wanted to make sure they would get this fixed and not turn my water off.<br />
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"You live in a duplex," she responded after looking up my account.<br />
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"No, I do not."<br />
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"Yes you do.<br />
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"No I don't." Because we are 5-years-old.<br />
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"We show it's a duplex."<br />
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"It's not a duplex. It USED TO BE a duplex, but it was converted to a single family home almost 20 years ago," I explained to her. <br />
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"It's a duplex."<br />
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Son of a biscuit eater. <br />
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"It's not a duplex!" I said with my voice raised because I was irritated by then. And I was thankful I had warned the lady who sits in the cubicle next to me that she might hear me yelling at someone before I called them because I've dealt with them for 11 years now and I know they make you want to raise your voice.<br />
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"Our records show it's a duplex," said the robotic lady.<br />
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"I'm telling you it's not and hasn't been a duplex for almost 20 years since the lady before me bought the house in 1996. She converted the house to a single-family home. It's not my fault your records are wrong."<br />
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"We've been reading the wrong meter at your address since you moved in then."<br />
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"Okay. That's also not my fault. There are two meters and they are ONE INCH apart. How can someone not notice that for two and a half years and not check both of them?"<br />
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"We have no way of knowing when a house has been converted."<br />
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"That's understandable. EXCEPT I TOLD Y'ALL WHEN I MOVED IN THAT IT'S A SINGLE FAMILY HOME!" I yelled. "And I can't help it that the lady who used to own the house may or may not have told y'all. I don't know that lady and have no control over her." <br />
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"Well, you need to come down here today and fill out an application or we'll turn off your water."<br />
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WHAT?<br />
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"I am not about to take time off from my job to drive downtown and fill out an application when I've been a customer for 11 years!" I yelled at her.<br />
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"I have to advise you that if you do not, your water will be turned off tomorrow."<br />
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"Oh no it will not! And I'm not driving down there today. You need to get this fixed right now while we're on the phone. Do you not think it's completely ridiculous that you are asking someone who has had an account with you for 11 years to come in person to fill out an application so you can open up an account?!"<br />
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"I have to advise you that if you don't come down, your water will be turned off tomorrow."<br />
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And that is when fire started spewing from my mouth and smoke from my ears and I thought my head may pop clean off.<br />
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"I am telling you this again - I will not come down there in person and fill out an application since I have HAD AN ACCOUNT WITH Y'ALL FOR 11 YEARS. And YOU WILL NOT TURN MY WATER OFF TOMORROW!" I yelled.<br />
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"Can you please hold for a minute?" she asked.<br />
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"Yes, I certainly can if you're putting me on hold to fix this."<br />
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I held. And held. And held. And held.<br />
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She finally came back on the line and said, "I spoke to my supervisor and we're going to put a stop hold on your account until we get this straightened out."<br />
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"So my water will not be turned off tomorrow?"<br />
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"No it won't. But I need to warn you that next month you will be receiving a very sizable bill because we'll be adjusting your account from the past 2.5 years."<br />
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I VERY sarcastically responded, "So let me get this straight. I don't have to come down there today, my water won't be turned off tomorrow, but next month I get to pay a super gigantic water bill because y'all have screwed up and not done your jobs correctly for two and a half years? YOU ARE SO AWESOME!"<br />
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"Thank you!" she cheerfully replied because she does not understand sarcasm even a tiny bit.<br />
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"I am probably looking at a bill of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, right?" I asked because I've seen the stories on the news and I know how they do this to people.<br />
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"Yes, ma'am." <br />
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I then went on Facebook and talked about it. It just so happens that a sweet couple moved in two houses down from me just before Christmas. And the wife just so happens to be a reporter on one of the local news channels. So I asked her if they might be interested in covering it. She said she'd pass it along to the consumer guy because he LOVES covering these stories and has fought the water department for years.<br />
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The next day a very nice guy called me from the water department. He confirmed my address and then asked if I lived in _________ (name of my neighborhood). I told him I do and he said he used to live right around the corner from me. He then asked me if I've ever met the crazy one-eyed lady or the lady who walks to church several times per week and judges everyone for their lifestyles if she doesn't agree with them and preaches to them about how they will go to hell. And I immediately knew I was going to like this guy. He also told me about the time he looked in his backyard and a lawn mower had suddenly appeared and he found out someone stole it from his next door neighbor but just threw it over the fence into his backyard. And those reasons are how I knew he really did live around the corner at some point in my insane 'hood.<br />
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He then mumbled how much he hates working for the water department, how much he wants to find a new job, that he has 3 college degrees but because of the economy he's been stuck there for 10 years, and how happy he is that he moved outside of the city limits and does not have his service with the City of Atlanta water. And I that's when I decided I wanted to marry him and have his babies.<br />
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In the hour we were on the phone, I told him all about the situation that needed to be straightened out, I told him how rude the lady had been to me on the phone the day before, and I told him if I heard of any jobs in his field I'd be sure to call him if he gave me his direct number. We then discussed our love lives and he told me after his last crazy girlfriend he decided to take his love life out to the backyard and shoot it and bury it and he was swearing off dating for a while. And I told him a very short version of my crazy situation with Hot Brazilian. And then I asked him how old he is. He's 36. I told him that I'm 45 so I'm too old for him but I would put some thought to whether or not I had a non-crazy friend in his age range to set him up with. He said, "But you and I could still hang out sometime as friends." I responded, "We COULD hang out! In fact, we could meet up for a drink tonight if we wanted to!" "Yes, we COULD!" he replied. (We didn't.)<br />
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The entire time we were having this quite professional conversation, he was inputting figures into some sort of spreadsheet and formula trying to figure out how expensive my bill was going to be after they adjusted it.<br />
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He told me the lady lied the day before because they would not be back billing me for 2.5 years since it was all their fault. They would only back bill me for a year for the adjusted fees. He was super pissed at the way she had talked to me.<br />
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After an hour, he said, "Okay, I have a number for you. After factoring in all of the payments you have already paid, you are going to owe us $90."<br />
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"$90? Are you serious? That's it? The lady yesterday said I was going to owe hundreds if not thousands of dollars."<br />
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"Nope. You will owe about $90. And I'm going to see about getting rid of that."<br />
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Then he told me a guy named Homer would have to come out to my house and go through it to confirm I only have one kitchen and it would then be put on record that I do not live in a duplex. <br />
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The next morning Homer came to my house and he looked around and verified I only have one kitchen. Then he went out to the two meters which are one inch apart and wrote down some numbers off of them and said he would get things straight. Homer was a cool dude. He told me I could use the second meter to hook my sprinkler system into and then I will only have to pay water fees but no sewer fees when I water my grass.<br />
<br />
I went to work and about an hour later I got a call from the nice young man from the previous day. <br />
<br />
"I have good news and even better news!" he said. "We have your meters straightened out so this should not happen again. And I've gotten approval to write off all of the back charges so you will not owe any additional charges from the past year!"<br />
<br />
I then asked him about the second meter being used for the sprinkler system and he said once I have a plumber connect it to call him back and he'll set all of that up on that end. <br />
<br />
Do y'all want to hear the best part of this crazy story in my opinion? You know that famous book about a whale and the opening line is "Call me __________"? That was this guy's name. A guy with that name working for the water department just kind of cracks me up. (I'm not putting it in here in case he googles his name on a regular basis. Who knows? He might.)<br />
<br />
And that is the exceptionally long and completely ludicrous story of how I fought the water department and won with the help of a guy with an awesome name.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-67938331811648888592014-03-19T12:28:00.001-04:002014-03-19T12:29:11.145-04:00Everything is stupid.Last week my life was stupid. Kind of like the week before that. And this week. And probably next week too.<br />
<br />
My personality is such that when I decide I want to do something, I want to do it RIGHT NOW. Not next week. Not even tomorrow. I want to get it done today.<br />
<br />
Last Monday I was going through my emails and realized I had a coupon for <a href="http://www.worldmarket.com/" target="_blank">World Market</a> that was expiring that night and it was for 25% of my entire purchase. World Market is one of my favorite stores on earth and I decided on the spot that I needed to buy furniture for my back deck. Last year I bought a grill from a friend of mine and a table and chairs from Target, but I have a very long deck and it still looked empty.<br />
<br />
I drove to World Market's Buckhead location after work because it's 5 minutes from my office and I found an outdoor loveseat, coffee table, two wicker chairs, a mosaic tile bistro table, an umbrella and about 5648963134 outdoor pillows. But then they told me they didn't have the coffee table or the mosaic tile table in stock and couldn't sell their floor samples so I could buy them online that night and use my coupon, but then I would have to pay shipping and they warned me the shipping charges are expensive and it would probably be a wash of what I saved using the coupon. Two very nice associates had been helping me and one of them told me she'd be happy to help me load everything they did have in stock into my SUV when I finished checking out. As I was checking out, she ran back over to me and said she had solved my problem. She told me two other stores in Atlanta had those tables in stock so I could call one of them, have them hold the tables for me, drive over and pay for them that night so that I could get the 25% off, and then ask them to hold them for me again because there was no way they would fit in my car with everything else that night. I could then go back and pick them up another night after work. But using my 25% off coupon that night at two different stores saved me almost $350. Woot woot!<br />
<br />
And that is the story of how I looked like the Beverly Hillbillies driving from Buckhead to Dunwoody and then back downtown to my house on Monday night. Y'all, my car has never been so stuffed. I could barely see out of any windows because pillows and a loveseat and chairs were piled high. I then had to go back to Dunwoody after work on Tuesday night to pick up my other two tables. And then I begged my brother and niece to come over this weekend to help me assemble the loveseat and the bistro table. It's not that I don't know how, but it's difficult to hold pieces in place while you're also trying to screw stuff and I need an extra set of hands. Plus I haven't seen them since Christmas so I want to hang out with them and then I'll treat them to dinner for helping me.<br />
<br />
I then went to Lowe's on Wednesday night because I was going to buy some sort of spray paint sealant to protect my new furniture from the weather and I needed a mask because I planned to try and scrub the living daylights out of a tile floor in my house that my cat had pretty much ruined when she had her tummy issues before she died. And I didn't really want to breathe in cat poo particles and catch some weird disease. And this was just to pre-clean it before I had it professionally cleaned. Y'all it was a mess. I had kept the door shut since she died in January because I didn't want to smell it and I didn't want to look at it.<br />
<br />
While I was in Lowe's, I struck up a conversation with a guy in there about deadbolts because I have a deadbolt problem. I've been in my house for 2.5 years and 3 deadbolts have broken in my front door. The first one literally fell into pieces one night as the door was being locked by my cousin. The second one got to where the thing you turn to lock it would just spin around in circles and it wouldn't lock. And now a third one is just spinning around. I asked him if my door could just be out of alignment or something and he said it probably is and to have a contractor come look at it. Then I told him the paint is cracking ALL over my house. Upstairs. Downstairs. There are cracks between the panels in some of my doors. The paint is cracking in my bead board. But the paint on drywall is not cracking. He said I probably have settlement issues. I told him my house is just shy of 100-years-old and I would think it should be settled by now. I was thinking it was a humidity issue or something. <br />
<br />
I left Lowe's after buying a pizza stone to use on my grill, spray paint to paint two ugly little plastic chairs and a table I bought from Ikea years ago that I also want to use on the deck, spray paint to paint another thing I want to hang on the wall out on my deck, and a candle holder thing for outside. <br />
<br />
I forgot to buy the sealant and the mask. The only two things I went in there for.<br />
<br />
So on Thursday night I went to Home Depot to buy sealant and a mask. Thankfully I remembered those things, but I also bought a second umbrella because I decided I needed two of them on my deck, an umbrella stand, and I don't even remember what else but it was $165 worth of crap.<br />
<br />
And then on Friday I was able to schedule Stanley Steemer to come out on Saturday to steam clean my tile floors to get rid of all the evidence Bailey left behind. So when I got home from work on Friday night I spent about two hours trying to pre-clean the floors in my sun room and I honestly can't think of anything I've done that's quite so disgusting in a very long time. And right then and there I decided two things:<br />
<br />
1. I honestly don't think I will ever have another inside pet again as long as I live.<br />
2. I don't have enough furniture in that room and I can probably pull my new loveseat, coffee table and wicker chairs into the sun room when I'm not using them outside on the deck so I really didn't need to stop and buy that sealant on Thursday night after all because they won't really be sitting out in rain, etc..<br />
<br />
Stanley Steemer came to my house on Saturday afternoon and they scrubbed and scraped and deodorized and cleaned. I also had them clean the tile of my guest bathroom. My floors look so good, y'all! And they said they have seen worse because they could tell I was so embarrassed to show them that room. <br />
<br />
Sunday it rained all day here in Atlanta so I stayed home and walked into my sun room approximately every 10 minutes and grinned from ear to ear because the floor is clean.<br />
<br />
I'm having a sex toy party at my house one night in April. Oh yes I am. <a href="http://www.onefabulousmama.com/" target="_blank">One Fabulous Mama</a> is now selling sex toys and she was looking for people to hosts parties for her and I volunteered. June wants to come but she has a conflict that night. I'm hoping she can get rid of the conflict and come down for the weekend and I'll let y'all know if she does. We emailed each other about it yesterday for a while. I just love her! <br />
<br />
Anyway, I talked to my contractor on Friday night just before I spent an exciting evening scrubbing floors ruined by cat shit and I asked him if he can come the day of my party to go over a few things in my house because I'm going to try and take the whole day off of work: he refinished my deck for me last June and used a new product which is peeling off and looks all mildewed and crappy so he's going to see what he needs to do with it, he'll check out my front door/deadbolt situation, I have two electrical outlets on my deck that don't work, my gutters need cleaned out, and he's going to see if he can figure out why my house is cracking and (he also thinks it's a humidity issue and that I may need to have insulation blown in my crawl space and attic).<br />
<br />
Let's hope he's gone before the sex toys start showing up. He's a very nice Christian man. <br />
<br />
I was also going to tell y'all about my huge ridiculous battle with the water department that happened last week. They suddenly decided my house is a duplex and I had just moved into Unit B and that I needed to come down in person to fill out an application to open up an account that day or my water would be turned off. Even though I've been a customer and had an account for almost 13 years. But I will write about that whole stupid thing next time. Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-59345406212223735782014-03-10T13:12:00.004-04:002014-03-10T13:13:00.963-04:00Saturdays were not meant to be this productiveI think the horrible drive back from Texas and almost getting arrested caught up with me about mid-week, y'all.<br />
<br />
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights I got home from work around 7:00, ate dinner and went to bed. I am not a good sleeper and yet I slept from 8:30 or 9:00 until 6:30 the following morning on all of those nights.<br />
<br />
Oh. I did that on Saturday night too.<br />
<br />
I still feel tired. But I think I'm tired now from what I did on Saturday of this weekend and not the last one. And I think this coming Saturday I need to knock it off having busy or crazy Saturdays.<br />
<br />
I woke up early on Saturday morning because I was the party animal who went to bed at 8:30 on Friday night as though I am 102-years-old. I lounged around in bed watching TV and finally decided to get up around 8:00.<br />
<br />
By 10:30 a.m. I had eaten breakfast, made 6 chicken meals and put them in the freezer, had a 3 pound roast beef cooking away in the crock pot (I am SO excited about my lunch today because that roast beef is the bomb, ya'll), had about 6 quarts of taco soup cooked and cooling off to be frozen, and then by 11:00 I also had a big pot of pasta with tomato basil sauce done to eat on all week for dinner. I hate cooking so much and I don't want to do it on a daily basis. This will cover me for lunches and dinners for at least 2 weeks, and probably longer. I try to bring my lunch to work every day because I work in Buckhead where you can't get cheap lunches out. I can eat from home for a couple of bucks as opposed to the cheapest place I've found around my office which is a minimum of $8.50 for a sandwich and a drink with no sides.<br />
<br />
If you want the recipes, here are the ones I made (look at y'all.....getting recipes from someone who doesn't know how to cook):<br />
<br />
<a href="http://addapinch.com/cooking/2012/10/25/balsamic-roast-beef-recipe/#axzz2vZvLtfcs" target="_blank">Balsamic Roast Beef</a><br />
<br />
<br />
Taco Soup - I can't find a link online so here's what is in it:<br />
<br />
2 lbs ground beef<br />
One small or medium onion depending on how much you like onion<br />
1 packet of taco seasoning<br />
1 packet of ranch dip/dressing mix<br />
2 cans of corn undrained<br />
1 can of kidney beans undrained<br />
1 can of pinto beans undrained<br />
4 cans of stewed tomatoes<br />
<br />
Brown the ground beef and onion. Pour all of the other crap in the pot (I had about a cup of beef broth left over from the roast beef I had put in the crock pot so I threw it in the pot too. I also put a couple of cloves of crushed garlic in there.). Bring to a boil, then reduce and cook for about 30 minutes on medium. Allow to cool completely, then put in freezer bags if you want to freeze it. I'm not even a good cook and this was DELICIOUS.<br />
<br />
<br />
Mexican Chicken - I can't find a link to this one online either.<br />
<br />
Put frozen chicken breasts in a freezer bag (I had 6 breasts)<br />
Pour a jar of salsa in the bag (I used a 24 oz jar I think)<br />
Add 2 or 3 cloves of crushed garlic.<br />
<br />
Stick it in the freezer. When you get ready to bake it, take it out 24 hours ahead of time and put in the refrigerator. As it thaws, it will marinate in the salsa. Pour it all in a casserole dish and cook for 1.5 hours at 350 degrees. When it comes out of the oven, cover it shredded cheese. I can cook this on a Sunday and have dinner that night and for the entire work week ahead. Oh the joys of living alone and not having to share!<br />
<br />
A friend of my mom's brought the Mexican Chicken to her while I was out in Texas. It was delicious so I got the recipe from her. She also gave me the taco soup recipe but she didn't actually bring any of it to us, so hers probably would have been even better.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/pasta-tomato-basil-sauce-50400000132600/" target="_blank">And here is the recipe for the One Pot Pasta I made</a>. I don't care for spinach so I left it out. I have to be honest....this was not my favorite. If I ever made it again I would add a whole bunch more seasonings or something because it was pretty bland to me.<br />
<br />
Anyway, by noon I had enough meals made up for a long time and I had my kitchen cleaned so I decided if I sat down I wouldn't get anything else done because I was already a little tired if I'm being honest.<br />
<br />
So I went outside and blew leaves, raked leaves, bagged up many bags of leaves, and then I decided to pressure wash the back of my house, my deck, and my deck furniture.<br />
<br />
That all took me about 5 and a half hours and I went back in my house exhausted, sore and soaking wet. I took a shower, ate some roast beef, got the roast beef put away, washed the crock pot, and then I was in bed AGAIN by 8:30.<br />
<br />
I woke up in the middle of the night and had to pee because I drank about a gallon of water before I went to bed and I could barely walk to the bathroom I was so sore. My feet almost made me cry. My thighs and butt were screaming at me from bending and bagging up leaves. My forearm muscles were pleading for mercy from using the pressure washer.<br />
<br />
I found my plantar fasciitis sleeves and put them on before I got back in bed.<br />
<br />
Yesterday morning I huffed and puffed, and grumbled and oohed and aahed and struggled and finally made it down the stairs.<br />
<br />
I made a <a href="http://onceamonthmeals.com/blueberry-breakfast-grilled-cheese/" target="_blank">grilled blueberry/cream cheese</a> sandwich (I only made a single sandwich and OMG it was SO GOOD that I wanted 10 more!) for breakfast as a treat and then slowly made my way to the sofa. Where I stayed for the entire day with a pillow, blanket and the remote. I could barely manage to get up when I had to pee, I skipped lunch because I was too sore to move and get up to make anything, and I generally laid there feeling sorry for myself.<br />
<br />
I did manage to make a sandwich for dinner and I took it out on my back deck so I could eat on my freshly cleaned table and enjoy the beautiful weather for a few minutes.<br />
<br />
And now I will try to make it through the week from the stupid time change and will probably be in bed by 8:30 several nights again. <br />
<br />
My life. So full of excitement.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-72442858903163477502014-03-05T13:58:00.000-05:002014-03-05T13:58:53.979-05:00And now I will tell y'all how I almost got arrested the other night. Or morning. Well, it was in the middle of the night.By the time I was almost arrested, I was so tired I almost didn't care because they might have a cot for me to lay down on and go to sleep in jail.<br />
<br />
I had left Texas around 11:00 a.m. Atlanta time on Saturday morning, and I forgot to tell y'all this yesterday, but I stopped at a gas station there and bought a lamp as I left.<br />
<br />
I had stopped at the Duck Dynasty place.<br />
<br />
I had stood in the middle of the expressway seeing bodies for quite a while that had been ejected from a car in that horrific accident near Jackson, Mississippi.<br />
<br />
I had taken a 50 mile detour through Mississippi country.<br />
<br />
I had eaten dinner with my aunt and talked to her for a couple of hours.<br />
<br />
I had driven through Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And Birmingham. And Anniston.<br />
<br />
I finally got to a suburb of Atlanta (which I will not name in case the police department googles and finds this post) around 3:00 in the morning. And I was bone weary tired. I wasn't sleepy, but I was completely fatigued after 16 hours on the road. I had half a tank of gas and only 30 minutes to drive until I was home, but I decided to stop there and fill up my car because gas is a lot cheaper out there than in town where I live and then I wouldn't have to stop this week and pay more to fill up. And I wanted to pick up a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread so I would have something for breakfast on Sunday. <br />
<br />
This was a huge mistake.<br />
<br />
I stopped at the pump for gas. I then went inside to get my milk and bread. When I was inside, there was the cashier (a young lady), a man buying something, and a sheriff's deputy buying a snack of some sort. I walked back out towards my car at about the same time the deputy was walking out. We never spoke to one another.<br />
<br />
As I was getting in my car, he flew backwards out of his parking space and then proceeded to speed through the parking lot of the gas station (y'all know how some cops drive like their butts are on fire for no reason?) and I saw him go up a little cut through driveway into the parking lot of a business next to the gas station. There were 5 more cop cars sitting there. It was 3:15 a.m. and apparently there wasn't much going on so they were just hanging out.<br />
<br />
I got my purse and milk and bread settled in the seat next to me, cranked up my car, and proceeded to turn on my mp3 player. Now I will admit that I had been playing my music way louder than I should have been for several hours by that point because I was trying to keep myself alert. So it was rather loud when I put my car in drive and pulled away from the pump.<br />
<br />
I heard the thud of something hitting the side of my car as I drove off from the pump and thought, "Crap. I must have forgotten to close my gas cap." And sure enough, I saw it open in my side view mirror. <br />
<br />
I stopped by another pump, got out of my car, walked around, screwed the gas cap back on and closed the cover. I then got back in my car and drove up to the exit of the gas station. Suddenly a cop was flying across the parking lot towards the exit with his lights on so I sat there thinking he had just gotten a call and I would let him get out before I pulled out into the road.<br />
<br />
Only he stopped right at my door and got out of his car.<br />
<br />
I had no idea what was going on, so I turned my music down, I rolled down my window and very politely and cheerfully (as cheerfully as I could sound after 16 hours on a hellish road trip) said, "Hi, officer!"<br />
<br />
Through gritted teeth, a red face (he was a redhead and you know how red they can get in the face when they are pissed off), and almost spitting at me he was so angry, he screamed at me, "IF YOU DON'T GO BACK IN THAT STORE RIGHT THIS SECOND AND TELL THAT YOUNG LADY WHAT YOU JUST DID, I AM TAKING YOU TO JAIL RIGHT NOW!"<br />
<br />
I looked at him blankly because I had no idea what I had just done.<br />
<br />
And he just stared at me so I said, "Um, I'm sorry, but what did I just do?"<br />
<br />
"DON'T EVEN TRY TO ACT LIKE YOU DON'T KNOW!" he yelled.<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry, sir, but I honestly don't know what I've done wrong," I responded.<br />
<br />
"YOU DIDN'T HEAR THAT NOISE?"<br />
<br />
"I heard my gas cap hit the side of my car so I got out and put it on and closed the cover."<br />
<br />
"YOU'RE GOING TO SIT HERE AND TELL ME YOU DIDN'T HEAR THAT NOISE?"<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry, sir. I really don't know what you're talking about."<br />
<br />
"DID YOU NOT SEE 6 COPS SITTING THERE? WE ALL HEARD IT. YOU HAD THE GAS NOZZLE STILL IN YOUR CAR AND YOU PULLED THE HOSE OUT OF THE PUMP!"<br />
<br />
"Oh. I am SO sorry. I honestly didn't realize I had done that." I really didn't because.....16 hours on the road....hellish trip.....loud music which muffled the sound......mind not working very clearly by that point.<br />
<br />
He then proceeded to yell at me (again) that he would tote me off to jail right that second if I didn't go back in the store and tell the lady what I had done.<br />
<br />
"I will be more than happy to do that, sir. Again, I am very sorry. I honestly didn't realize I did that. And yes, I saw 6 cop cars sitting next door. I would never have done something like that and driven off had I realized it. <i>Especially</i> not in front of 6 police officers. It was a total accident."<br />
<br />
"YOU NEED TO GIVE ME YOUR IDENTIFICATION AND I'LL BE HOLDING ON TO THAT UNTIL YOU GO INSIDE AND RECTIFY THIS SITUATION," he yelled.<br />
<br />
"Yes, sir," I mumbled as I got my license and handed it over.<br />
<br />
I proceeded to back up, turn around and drive back to the front door and park. He was hot on my tail and we walked in together.<br />
<br />
The cashier was over on one side of the store cleaning some stuff and she looked up. The officer didn't even speak - he just held up two fingers and very aggressively and angrily waved her over to the counter. Her eyes darted to me in shock and she came over and walked behind the counter.<br />
<br />
"THIS YOUNG LADY JUST DROVE OFF WITH THE HOSE STILL IN HER CAR AND IT PULLED THE HOSE OUT OF YOUR PUMP. AND THEN SHE WAS GOING TO JUST LEAVE THE PREMISES," he loudly said to her.<br />
<br />
And I could have jumped over the counter and hugged her when she replied, "Oh, that's no big deal. It happens a lot."<br />
<br />
At some point another officer had walked in and was standing near the door and he was snickering when she said it. <br />
<br />
She asked him if gas was spewing out of the tank or anything and he told her no. She again told him it's not a big deal. <br />
<br />
The officer called in my license number and when it came back that no one was looking for me I think it made him even angrier. He really seemed to want to take me to jail for some reason.<br />
<br />
I looked at the cashier and said, "I really am incredibly sorry about this. It was an accident and I didn't realize I had done it. I've been driving home from Texas today and I'm very tired and apparently my head is not clear right now."<br />
<br />
"Oh wow. Texas? That is a long way and I can only imagine how tired you are," she replied. <br />
<br />
Then Mr. Officer said again, "DID YOU REALLY NOT SEE 6 COPS SITTING THERE WHEN YOU DID THIS?"<br />
<br />
I looked him straight in the eye and said, "Sir, yes I saw y'all. I've apologized and I've tried to explain this was an accident and I was not aware of what I had done. My brother is a sergeant with the ________ Police Department. I have a lot of respect for law enforcement. I am an upstanding and very law abiding citizen. I haven't even had a speeding ticket in about 20 years. All I can say to you and this young lady is that I am very sorry."<br />
<br />
"WHERE DO YOU WORK?" he barked.<br />
<br />
"At a law firm," I said and I thought the other officer was going to pee his pants at that point he was shaking so hard and trying not to laugh out loud.<br />
<br />
"WHAT IS THE NAME OF YOUR FIRM AND ARE YOU A PARALEGAL?" because apparently I seemed too stupid to be an attorney. <br />
<br />
I told him the name of my firm and that I am a legal assistant. He wrote all of that down on the very official scrap piece of paper he was using. He then made me write down my social security number and he got my phone number.<br />
<br />
He then slapped my license down on the counter in front of me and barked at the cashier, "YOU GET EVERY SINGLE BIT OF INFORMATION FROM THIS LADY YOU NEED SO SHE CAN TAKE CARE OF THIS. YOUR HOSE IS JUST OUT THERE ON THE GROUND!"<br />
<br />
The cashier replied, "I don't think I really need anything from her. We'll just call in a work order and they come fix it. It's really not a big deal at all. It happens a lot."<br />
<br />
He then proceeded to explain to me that he would be preparing a report that would be on file with the police department and if I needed a copy I could get one.<br />
<br />
"ONCE THIS YOUNG LADY GETS ALL OF YOUR INFORMATION, YOU ARE FREE TO GO M'AM."<br />
<br />
"Thank you, sir. I hope you have a really good night," I responded as he turned his back to us and walked towards the door.<br />
<br />
"What an asshole! What is his problem?" the cashier said as the door closed behind him.<br />
<br />
"You have no idea. Before we came in here he threatened to take me to jail!" I said to her.<br />
<br />
"For pulling the hose out??? It happens all the time! I really don't think I need anything at all from you, but in case he's out there watching us, just give me your name and phone number so he won't be after you," she said.<br />
<br />
I asked her if she wanted me to go get the hose and bring it inside to her and she said no, that we would walk out there and take a look. We walked out and the hose had come unconnected at a joint. Nothing was broken, but it was too far over our heads for us to screw it back in. She kicked it off to the side and said not to worry about a thing and she headed back in. The two cops were still sitting in the cars next to the pump.<br />
<br />
I walked back over to my car and proceeded to try and leave again. The cop followed me. Really?<br />
<br />
Luckily, as I got back on I-20 he chose to leave me alone.<br />
<br />
I finally got home at 4:00 a.m., which was 17 very long hours after I left my mom's house. I unloaded my car, left everything next to my front door, ripped off my bra and collapsed on the sofa because the thought of walking upstairs to my bed was more than I could handle.<br />
<br />
I talked to my brother (the cop) about what happened and he told me I would not be out of line if I called in a complaint against the officer because he was way over the top. He said technically the officer did nothing wrong, but he was a total hothead and there was no need for him to speak to me the way he did or handle it that way. He said the fact that I wasn't charged with anything would make my complaint carry even more weight because I still felt the need to call in and tell them how I was treated. But he said it will take a lot of my time to deal with it. And I don't think I want to give that guy another minute of my life so I probably won't.<br />
<br />
It's been 3 days and I haven't heard a word from the gas station company. Like the girl said, I guess it happens all the time and it really wasn't that big of a deal.<br />
<br />
I just know I am not going to be looking forward to another road trip for the next 100 years or so.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-32606518739256711082014-03-04T16:21:00.001-05:002014-03-04T16:31:08.260-05:00How I unexpectedly saw Pocohontas, Mississippi and had a police officer threaten to arrest me in Georgia in the same dayHello, y'all!<br />
<br />
As usual, things have been crazy in my world. I was supposed to leave last Sunday morning, the 23rd, to drive out to Texas to my mom's. She had a hip replacement the week before and I was going to help her out once she got home. Instead I spent Sunday the 23rd in the bathroom and in bed because I had food poisoning. So I left on Monday the 24th instead.<br />
<br />
The trip out was great! It was long (11 hours) but nothing crazy happened. I just drove and drove and drove down I-20. Between my house in Atlanta and my mom's house in Texas there are 4 turns. Doesn't that seem insane? A 700+ mile trip with only 4 turns involved. The most disappointing thing was that I couldn't binge on junk food while I was driving which is what I always do on road trips because my stomach was still a little gross feeling after the food poisoning the day before. Instead I had ginger ale, Gatorade and stopped for a bowl of soup in Vicksburg, MS. <br />
<br />
My mom was doing really well from her surgery. She has minor pain but she says it's nothing compared to the pain she had been living with on her bad hip. She can't bend over yet so I helped her get undressed and dressed, cleaned her incision, helped her with her physical therapy each day, helped her get in and out of the shower, kept her house picked up, dishes done, and answered the door approximately 43584502384 times each day because so many of her friends and people from their church stopped by to visit, bring food, etc. The only things I had to make were toast, one turkey sandwich, and a bowl of soup because people fed us dinner every single night I was there and we normally had leftovers for lunch the next day. Her husband was getting ready for a huge meeting at work this week and I helped him with some stuff too (typing up meal menus, forms, etc). And I know that doesn't sound like a whole lot, but we honestly barely had a minute to talk to each other one-on-one or relax because we were busy almost every minute of every day and the week was over before we knew it.<br />
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I did take a few minutes one morning and raided her gift wrapping supplies to try and jazz up her walker a little bit and make it a little happier. Y'all don't laugh - I had very limited stuff to work with, okay? I gave her a little basket to carry small stuff like her cell phone, etc.<br />
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This past Saturday I came back home.<br />
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And it was one of the worst days I've had in a very, very long time. It was kind of like hell if I'm being honest.<br />
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It started off okay. When you're coming through West Monroe, Louisiana on I-20, the Duck Commander Headquarters is approximately 5 blocks off the expressway. I've only watched Duck Dynasty twice so I would not say I'm a fan, but since I was so close I decided to stop. I pulled in the parking lot, jumped out and took 3 photos and got back in my car. I did not go inside.<br />
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I don't know these people but I want to know why this man thought he needed to hold these poor kids up against the wall as though they were going to run away. And I think he thought they might cast him in the show with the beard and the clothes. There were a few men wandering around the parking lot with a similar look so I got out of there.<br />
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This is some sort of camper/trailer thing they had in the parking lot: <br />
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And here's something they don't show on TV. I assume they don't anyway. I don't watch the show so maybe they do, but this is what's behind the Duck place. Glamorous, huh?<br />
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At this point in my trip I was a couple of hours into it and things were fine. I just kept driving and driving and driving. And then I crossed the bridge over the Mississippi River:<br />
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Mississippi is when things went bad, y'all.<br />
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I have some family in Jackson and I had arranged to stop and meet one of my aunts at Cracker Barrel as I went through. I told her I would be there between 3:00 and 4:00. I called her at 3:00 when I was about 30 miles from Jackson to let her know how far away I was and she said she had been out running errands and got done early so she was already there sitting in a rocking chair waiting for me.<br />
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And then everything changed about 15 minutes later.<br />
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I came around a slight curve in the road and saw the most horrific thing. A semi was stopping and pulling into the emergency lane. A pick-up truck had stopped at a weird angle in front of me. And cars had stopped in the emergency lane on the opposite side of the expressway and people were running as fast as they could through the median to my side of the road. More people were jumping out of their cars on the other side of the road. Right in front of the pick-up truck was an SUV in a crumpled mess laying on its side in the eastbound lanes.<br />
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Then I saw the people scattered all over the expressway.<br />
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The SUV was in the left lane where I was. A lady was two lanes away in the emergency lane where she had been thrown from the car. <br />
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Y'all, it was the most awful thing I've ever seen and it had happened mere seconds in front of me. Had I been just a couple of seconds further up the road, that SUV could have flipped right into me.<br />
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I sat in my car and I prayed for those people. The lady in the emergency lane wasn't moving. People were running from everywhere. I have no medical training and I figured I might just be in the way since there were already so many people swarming around the scene so I did what I knew I could do. I prayed hard.<br />
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A man was in the median next to my car sobbing on the shoulder of another woman. There were two young (pre-teen) boys sobbing and wandering around in circles.<br />
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I saw part of a person sticking out from under the SUV. I saw a teenage boy sitting up in the median where he had been thrown. I saw part of a person in the road in front of the SUV (he was partially hidden by the car). There was another person completely hidden from my view by the car.<br />
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Within a couple of minutes police cars started coming. An ambulance or two showed up. A fire truck. Then the life flight helicopter came and landed in the middle of the expressway. <br />
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What I learned later was that a bunch of people were headed westbound from a church event. I guess they kind of had a caravan of vehicles. A rear tire blew out, the driver lost control, flipped across the median and landed in the eastbound lanes. In all, there were 8 people in the vehicle and 5 of them had been ejected in the crash. Three people were life flighted. Four people were in critical condition. But miraculously there were no fatalities. Most of the people I saw running across the median as I drove up were people who were in the caravan and they knew them. I found out the man I saw sobbing in the median was the brother of one of the victims. Oh, y'all. It was so awful. I've looked online to see if I could get an update but I can't find anything new about the accident.<br />
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I spoke with my aunt several times in the hour or so I stood there in the middle of the expressway. I told her I didn't know how long I would be there and to not feel like she needed to wait. Eventually a police officer told us they were shutting down the expressway probably for hours and we needed to cross the median and head back westbound. I said a final prayer and then followed his instructions.<br />
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I had less than a quarter tank of gas so I stopped at the first exit I came to and as I stood there filling up I realized the man at the pump next to me had been standing on I-20 with me a few minutes previously. I told him I was trying to get to Atlanta but had to meet my aunt at Cracker Barrel and asked if he could help me get around the accident and back on I-20. He told me it was going to be a long detour but he wrote down directions for me. I called my aunt and told her where he instructed me to go and that I was driving to meet her but I had no clue where I was or how long it would take.<br />
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"Do you see Highway 80?" she asked.<br />
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"I see cows."<br />
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"Do you see a college?" she asked.<br />
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"I see more cows. Oh wait. Now I see a horse!" I responded. "But no college. I'm definitely not seeing a campus of any sort."<br />
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I went to Flora, MS. According to the internet, the population of Flora in 2012 was 1,896 people. There are probably more cows than people living there.<br />
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Then I saw a sign that I was in Pocahontas, MS. Do you know what? I've never heard of that place before I was driving through it on Saturday in a completely unexpected turn of events. I have been to Pocahontas, Arkansas though. I spent an entire weekend there for a family thing.<br />
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By the time I sat at the scene of the accident and then went on this approximately fifty mile detour through the country to get around it, my poor aunt had been waiting at Cracker Barrel for TWO AND A HALF HOURS, y'all. <br />
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And I couldn't possibly rush through dinner and then jump in my car after she waited that long. So we sat and talked for over 2 hours. By the time I was getting ready to leave Jackson, MS it was already 9:30 p.m. Atlanta time. She begged me to drive an hour to her house and spend the night with her and my uncle, but I just wanted to be home by that point....even though I knew home was still a minimum of five and a half hours away. I promised her if I started feeling sleepy or thought I couldn't make it that I would stop and get a hotel room, and then I hit the road again.<br />
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Aaaaannnnd crap. I can't finish this because I have something I have to do here at work. So you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out how I was threatened by a police officer with arrest before I made it home. It's really a post all of its own anyway.<br />
<br />Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-58650865832607756992014-02-19T17:52:00.000-05:002014-02-19T17:52:07.192-05:00Um. Yeah. So all of this happened recently. And it's not even everything.Oh wow. It's been two weeks since I've posted, huh? <br />
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I think I've been busy doing a lot of things that I could blog about, but now I can't remember a lot of it. But here are a few things.<br />
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1. I almost got covered in a lot of jelly at the grocery store and then I saw some cowboys riding horses through downtown Atlanta on my way home. No, that's not a dream I had one night. It actually happened.<br />
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You see, I was on an aisle where I was looking for a marinade and it was near the jelly. An employee was stocking jelly and he had boxes of it on a rolling cart. The cart was right in front of the sauces, marinades, etc. and I was leaning around behind the cart to get the bottle I needed when the employee picked up a box of jelly, the entire bottom of the box fell out and a whole box full of jelly jars crashed to the floor and broke. There was jelly every freaking where and I was crunching all over broken glass. Miraculously I had no jelly on me at all even though this all happened approximately 6 inches from my feet. He looked at me with such a horrid look as though he couldn't believe what had just happened. I looked back at him with a sad face and said, "Oh no," because I know how to react and make people feel better. His co-worker simply mumbled under his breath, "I guess I'll go get a mop." Yes, dude. I guess you will. Then I was driving through downtown on my way back home and I saw 3 cowboys riding horses through the middle of Atlanta. So all in all, that was kind of a weird day.<br />
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2. I used the marinade I got when I almost bathed in sticky jelly to grill out the next evening. A couple of days after I was outside in a tshirt in spring like weather grilling chicken and vegetables, this happened:<br />
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And I know for those of you who live up north that looks like a light dusting of snow. That is not snow. It's solid ice. I stepped out on my deck with all of my body weight (which is a lot) and it didn't crack, it didn't leave a footprint, etc. Solid ice. <br />
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Overnight that night is when the snow came and then we had this:<br />
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Which I know still looks like nothing for those of you up north, but for Atlanta that is a giant mess. Two days later, it was in the 50s and over the weekend it was in the 60s but I still had ice on my deck until yesterday because it was so solid and thick.</div>
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Since I was stuck inside for two days, I decided to get some fun stuff done. So I did my taxes.</div>
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Also, I know those of you not from around here know that when they call for snow down south we all decide we need to make French toast suddenly so we all stampede to the grocery store and fight each other over bread, milk and eggs. They were telling us this storm was going to be catastrophic and Biblical (yes, they used those words) so I had friends who said they couldn't even find any frozen vegetables by the time they got to the store.</div>
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I live alone and buy groceries each Friday evening for the following week because I'm a partier who hangs out at the grocery store on Friday night so I had stocked up way ahead of time before I even knew we were supposed to get snow. </div>
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This is where I was the night before the storm:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiP7bwgxGBy9YsaJ5OQrFzor-6_JTrZtzrmdNJ_7JbnGI9CVraU5VM-m9SnyORVQiM9e3fRLp9DMrUAl77EdrEOs-WHPiAyeZttzDtJR5X03gdJHhRPCN_BfVlKjoVUFXBIXFw-RC5sxVd/s1600/art+supply.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiP7bwgxGBy9YsaJ5OQrFzor-6_JTrZtzrmdNJ_7JbnGI9CVraU5VM-m9SnyORVQiM9e3fRLp9DMrUAl77EdrEOs-WHPiAyeZttzDtJR5X03gdJHhRPCN_BfVlKjoVUFXBIXFw-RC5sxVd/s1600/art+supply.jpg" height="640" width="480" /></a></div>
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I stocked up on paint for the two huge commission pieces I needed to work on. Especially because the guy had just emailed me two days previously wanting to know when they were going to be done and I really had barely started on them. (It had only been a week or two since we finalized all of the details so it's not like I had been putting him off for months or anything.) <br />
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He wanted abstracts with lots and lots of texture. Do y'all know what I've never painted before in my life? Abstracts with lots and lots of texture. He showed me photos of a painting he wanted me to base the pieces on - not to copy them identically, but he wanted me to use the same colors, same texture, etc.<br />
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And I said, "Oh sure! No problem! I can do those. Easy peasy." I said this because I'm a fool. I'm used to painting not abstract and not textured paintings on canvases that are 16x20". He wanted 24x48" and he wanted two of them. That's 8 feet long and 4 feet wide total, y'all. <br />
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So I took the photos he gave me to the art supply store and looked around and found a product I thought would work for the texture (a product I've never used in my life) and consulted with an employee in there and she agreed it would give me the closest look to what he wanted from me.<br />
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This is the canvas with the texture stuff. It looks like the ceiling of the house I grew up in:<br />
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And then I started with the 1st of 5 colors:<br />
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Y'all try not to be jealous of my gorgeous neon fish tablecloth, okay? It was on clearance for $3 somewhere and I knew I would be getting paint all over it so I didn't really care what it looked like. <br />
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TWENTY HOURS later, this is what they look like. I don't enjoy spending more than about 2 or 3 hours on a painting. I was ready to stab someone by the time I got done with these.<br />
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A close up of the texture if you care:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpXIexwBECgSoq1mmveYev0v39PSBsM1AhQbuk1QNbwK0N6f2oWvczrqiBZLz8VQshrRhJdtMTW8MW1J-R-8XrUP6Nf6wBf3NiEU9YsgRGLj3Q07PH7mGxztzY6h5fg5pvJCWIpZq_WrBJ/s1600/Texture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpXIexwBECgSoq1mmveYev0v39PSBsM1AhQbuk1QNbwK0N6f2oWvczrqiBZLz8VQshrRhJdtMTW8MW1J-R-8XrUP6Nf6wBf3NiEU9YsgRGLj3Q07PH7mGxztzY6h5fg5pvJCWIpZq_WrBJ/s1600/Texture.jpg" height="640" width="481" /></a></div>
<br />
The next time someone asks me to do humongous abstract paintings with lots of texture I will say this to them:<br />
<br />
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!<br />
<br />
Unless they want to pay me about twice what I quoted this guy.<br />
<br />
So yes, while my neighbors all walked up to Little 5 Points and hung out together in a 'hood bar to enjoy the ice/snow day, I did my taxes and painted these *^&%$ commission pieces.<br />
<br />
3. The snow ended on Thursday around noon at my house. On Friday night it rained. <br />
<br />
And oh yeah, we also had an earthquake.<br />
<br />
I had just gotten in the bed and about 2 minutes later, my entire house shook. My bed shook, my windows rattled, the chain on my ceiling fan was bouncing against the lights, and I couldn't figure out what it was. It lasted for probably 5+ seconds. I immediately looked at the clock so I would know exactly what time it happened in case I needed to know for some reason. It was 10:24 p.m. and I was watching the local early news like I'm 85-years-old. I thought something had fallen on my house. Or a group of people were running across my wooden deck. (Because I don't know about y'all, but that shit happens a lot. I often have groups of people come to my house, open up my front gate, come down the driveway and walk behind my house, and run back and forth across the deck while it's raining outside and the deck is covered in thick ice.) Then I realized I didn't hear anything fall or anyone running. All that happened was everything shook. I thought, "could that have been an earthquake? Naw. People will think I'm crazy if I say I felt an earthquake."<br />
<br />
About 10 minutes later the anchor on the news said, "We are getting reports of an earthquake hitting a few minutes ago." And I felt an inkling less crazy than I normally do.<br />
<br />
4. So on Tuesday it had rained almost 24 hours straight. Between Wednesday and Thursday, we had approximately 34 straight hours of sleet, freezing rain and snow. On Friday night we had rain and a freaking earthquake. And on Saturday this was happening in my back yard:<br />
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The flowers are blooming. </div>
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I have to run now, but I still have to share with y'all about an internet sensation who is coming to my house in April to sell sex toys (oh yes, that is true). And I injured myself again on Sunday. Twice. And some weird stuff happened on my drive yesterday. And my mom had surgery today. See? I have a lot to say! </div>
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Talk at y'all later!</div>
<br />Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-84426327861181325722014-02-05T12:31:00.001-05:002014-02-05T12:31:52.699-05:00I had a ridiculous evening and it's no one's faultDo you know how sometimes you can have a ridiculous day or evening but it's really just a combination of circumstances out of everyone's control so you can't blame anyone for it? That's the kind of evening I had last night.<br />
<br />
My younger brother who lives in Kentucky called me yesterday afternoon as I was sitting in the break room with a couple of friends enjoying lunch.<br />
<br />
"Hey, Bev. I have a huge favor to ask you and you can say no if you want to."<br />
<br />
"Okay. No. Absolutely not," I replied because I think I'm funny even though I'm really not.<br />
<br />
He went on to tell me that his girlfriend/wife's (I've told y'all that story, right?) sister and her husband were flying back from their vacation in Mexico last night and had a connecting flight in Atlanta to get back home to Kentucky. But a winter storm with possible sleet, freezing rain and snow was forecast in KY. And they were right on the line of whether it was just going to be rain or whether it was going to be nasty and icy. And then he asked if they could stay at my house if their flight ended up getting cancelled out of Atlanta. But he wasn't sure because they might decide to just sleep at the airport or get a hotel but he asked if I could be their stand-by sleeping location. And then could I help get them to the airport this morning or let them hang out at my house while I came to work if their flight was delayed for a lot longer.<br />
<br />
I've never met these people in my life, but because I know my brother's girlfriend/wife really well and I've met her parents and they are all super cool people and don't seem at all to be a family of serial killers, I was totally okay with her sister and the sister's husband staying with me.<br />
<br />
"Sure," I told my brother. "But they need to give me time to clean their bathroom when I get home from work." My mom and her husband were here for a week last month and I had not gotten around to cleaning it yet. Don't judge me. I have 4 bathrooms in my house so I had others to choose from. Luckily, something had told me to wash the sheets and clean up the guest bedroom this past weekend so that room was good to go. The bathroom? Not so much.<br />
<br />
I've also been in the process of de-Bailey-ing my house: I spent a good part of this past weekend steam mopping floors, throwing out her food dishes, water bowls, litter boxes (yes plural even though she only used them occasionally), in between sitting down and sobbing because I was having to throw away all of that stuff. I also had to prepare a couple of food items to take to a Super Bowl party, go to the Super Bowl party, and I was working on the two commission paintings I need to do so I didn't get all of the cleaning done.<br />
<br />
I keep my house fairly clean most of the time. But you know how it is when you have company coming. You do extra cleaning. Especially when everything is covered in a layer of cat hair and my cat had been sick with the never ending poops for over a year. And I had never met these people in my life.<br />
<br />
I got home from work at 7:00 and decided to steam mop the bathroom floor. I cleaned the toilet (which is my most hated thing to do in all the world), cleaned the sink, and then before I cleaned the bathtub/shower I got sidetracked. I decided I needed to try and get all of the cat fur off of the chair and ottoman in my reading nook which is right outside of the guest bedroom. So I started cleaning that. It took a while. It still needs work. Seriously? How does the fur get so stuck in stuff? I usually swipe a stack of the envelopes that adhere to Fed Ex packages from the office and use them instead of lint rollers. They are way bigger and stickier. (And do you know how many times I've sat in that reading nook and read a book in the over 2 years I've lived in my house? ZERO. That's how many times.) Then I decided to steam mop my dining room, reading nook, and kitchen again. Even though I just did it 3 days ago and all I've done is walk through the dining room and reading nook. I haven't done one thing to make a mess. Then I scrubbed the kitchen sink. Again. <br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The dining room. It has super clean floors.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The reading nook. It still has a lot of fur in it.</i></span></span></div>
<br />
Then I started stressing out because I live alone and am more than happy to live off a bowl of cereal or piece of toast for dinner. What on earth was I going to feed these people?<br />
<br />
Around 8:15 I got a text from my brother's girlfriend/wife that her sister and husband had just boarded their plane and the flight had not been cancelled.<br />
<br />
So I sat down from exhaustion and ate a gourmet piece of toast for dinner and was glad I didn't have to do any additional cleaning last night.<br />
<br />
Then at 9:00 I got another text that said the plane was still sitting on the runway and they had not taken off yet so they might still need a place to stay because their flight was possibly going to be cancelled after all.<br />
<br />
So I jumped back up and started cleaning up the pile of mail that was cluttering my kitchen counter and then I decided I should probably at least clean the toilet and sink in the other bathroom downstairs in case they used that one at some point as well. No one has used that shower since I last cleaned it so it's good. <br />
<br />
At 9:20 I received a text that their flight had been cancelled, they were disembarking the plane but had to get their thoughts together, figure out where their luggage was, etc. and would let me know what was going on. <br />
<br />
I went and ran the Swiffer duster over everything in the living room, ran the dust mop over the floors in there because I was frankly tired of steam mopping at that point, and made sure everything was straightened up. <br />
<br />
Then I remembered I had never gotten back to clean the shower in the guest bathroom so I was heading that way and thinking, "How have I just spent almost 2 hours cleaning the downstairs of my house when it really was pretty clean to begin with?" when another text came in around 9:30.<br />
<br />
"Hey Bev! Thanks anyway, but they are really good friends with a coach at (local university here in Atlanta) and they just found out she is in town so they're heading to her house to spend the night."<br />
<br />
So I started drinking. (Not really.)<br />
<br />
I did immediately go to bed though.<br />
<br />
Thankfully, I won't have much cleaning to do this weekend now. And I could almost eat off of my floors at this point. <br />
<br />
But I still have to clean that *&^% shower. Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-59830682242751034242014-02-04T15:29:00.002-05:002014-02-04T15:30:12.128-05:00An unforgettable dayThis post is going to be more facts/information than fun or entertainment. <br />
<br />
Those of us down here in Atlanta know something. We know we were the butt of America's jokes last Tuesday when Snowcopalypse 2014 hit us. Y'all, there was nothing funny about what Atlanta went through last week. People were in very dire and dangerous situations. <br />
<br />
I get it. How can less than 3 inches of snow close down a city and cause the chaos that happened here?<br />
<br />
It was a combination of things. I don't think you can blame it on any one person or any one thing. Schools, businesses and government offices all left at the same time and the streets were clogged. I was surprised the schools were open in the first place. They normally stay closed if one snow flurry falls or if there is the threat of one snowflake coming. The few salt/sand trucks we have could not treat the roads because of the massive gridlock. Some people have asked why they didn't treat the roads ahead of the storm. I've heard some people say if they had, the cars driving on all of those roads during the morning commute would have blown most of the salt/sand away. I'm not an expert on that kind of thing so I have no idea. All of the cars that hit the roads at the same time melted and compacted the snow. And the temps were falling so it all turned to a solid sheet of ice. Atlanta is full of hills. I don't care if you grew up in Alaska - it's impossible to drive on an icy hill without snow tires which we don't have down here. Well, you can drive down an icy hill fine. Stopping tends to be a bit of a problem though. Atlanta has TONS of 18-wheeler traffic. There are laws that they cannot come inside the perimeter (an interstate that goes around the city) unless they have documentation proving they have deliveries or pickups inside. But a lot of truckers break that law. Truckers are required to have chains for their tires when they come here. But from what I understand, the officials don't enforce them actually putting them on. So a lot of trucks jack-knifed or got sideways in the roads and no one could get around them. In other words, there are a number of things you can blame for what happened last week.<br />
<br />
However, I will say that (in my opinion) the mayor of the City of Atlanta was getting a ton of the blame that he did not deserve. I work in the city limits and live in the city limits. It took me 2 hours to get home for my 8 mile commute. On an average day it takes me an hour because traffic here sucks on a sunny day with no weather situations occurring. I spent over 30 minutes just trying to get out of my parking deck because everyone left my building at the same time. So in reality, it only took me 30 minutes longer than my normal commute time (and that has happened before when there was no bad weather going on). The people who were in their cars for 12 - 24 hours driving, who sat on the roads stranded, who slept in stranger's homes, in the floors of grocery stores, drug stores or Home Depots, etc. were people trying to get out to the burbs. I have not personally heard of anyone who works and lives in the actual City of Atlanta who experienced the chaos that we all know was going on outside the city limits. I'm not saying it didn't happen to anyone, but I have not heard about it if it did. The only problem I know of personally within the city limits is a friend of mine who has a child that had to spend the night at school. But her child was safe, she wasn't sitting on a bus, she was fed, she had access to restrooms, they watched movies, etc. Was it ideal for her child to be away from her overnight sleeping at school? Of course not. But she was not in danger like a lot of people were that night. <br />
<br />
There were people stranded without medications. Babies in cold cars without enough formula, diapers, etc. Children stuck on school buses with no food, water or restrooms. People abandoning their cars and walking miles in ice and snow with temperatures in the teens. A baby was born in a car on the side of the expressway because the parents had been stuck in traffic for hours and emergency vehicles could not get to them. There was a teenage girl who was trying to push her grandmother's car which was stuck in the ice. Another car came sliding on the ice and the girl couldn't get out of the way. Her leg was amputated. Another woman was killed when her car slid into a ditch. And we heard on TV and read on the internet about how people around the country were laughing at us.<br />
<br />
I realize how blessed I was and you have no idea how grateful I am. But the mayor of the City of Atlanta should not be taking the entire blame for people who were stranded miles outside the city limits. He is not responsible for those roads. And he had his hands full with the City of Atlanta.<br />
<br />
What many people around the country don't realize is just how big metropolitan Atlanta is. Some people say it consists of 10 counties. Some say it's 28 counties. There are approximately 160+ cities within those counties in the metropolitan area. But most people will agree the metro Atlanta area is ginormous and we have a whole bunch of people here. I've seen articles that say that metro Atlanta is the size of the state of Massachusetts. In fact, I just Googled "population of Atlanta" and a box popped up that says the population of our metro area is larger than 24 individual states. <br />
<br />
Metropolitan Atlanta and the City of Atlanta are not the same. The actual City of Atlanta has a population of less than 500,000 people. But during the workday, there are over a million people in the city. And the mayor of the City of Atlanta has nothing to do with the interstates y'all saw pictures of last week. Yet you would not know that by a lot of the coverage I saw. Each county has officials. Each city within those counties has officials. And no one is in charge of overseeing the entire region. That is where a lot of the problem came from, I think. Everyone is doing their own thing and not coordinating anything. And what that resulted in was the citizens all being left to fend for themselves.<br />
<br />
I don't work for the government so I have no inside information, but I read that the last time we had an ice storm back in 2011, the city had 4 snow plows. Two of them ran into each other as they were pulling out of a parking lot and reduced our snow plows in half. I've also heard we had 10 plows. I don't know what the actual number was. They did purchase more, but it's still not many. We have tons of streets and roads and interstates here. Because we don't get this kind of weather on a regular basis, it makes no sense financially to buy tons of equipment that might sit around for years between use and they would not have the personnel on hand to operate them anyway. So as Atlantans, we have to accept that we might get shut down every few years for a day or more due to ice. The protocol is that they treat streets in front of fire stations, police stations, and hospitals. They treat one or two lanes of the interstates (we have interstates that are as many as 8 lanes in each direction in some areas and they are packed on a normal day with no ice or snow). And next they treat major roads. Side streets where the majority of people live? Those are not treated. In fact, the street I live on is a pretty heavily traveled side street. It is used a lot by emergency vehicles as a cut through so I thought there was a possibility my street would be treated (this is the first winter weather event we've had since I bought my house 2 years ago so I wasn't sure). We saw sand/salt trucks going up and down our street last week to treat the major roads on each end of our street. But they didn't drop a teaspoon of salt/sand on my street. That's just part of life down here.<br />
<br />
As for personal stories of people I know? I've heard some doozies. <br />
<br />
One of my co-workers had to stay in the office for a client meeting/closing. By the time it was over, the streets were impassable out towards where she lived because of the ice and gridlock. Ten people slept in our office. The clients were from out of town and had previously booked a hotel room across the street and they were lucky. There was a poultry convention here in town and my co-workers were unable to find a room anywhere. So they slept in the office. Ideal? No. But they were warm, safe, we have a beer machine, vending machines, the attorney in charge of the closing had ordered a case of wine from a private club located in our building, etc.<br />
<br />
Two of my co-workers slept overnight in a restaurant. One of them decided she was just not going to be able to get home so she pulled into a shopping center and decided to go in the restaurant to warm up a little bit. She saw another co-worker already in there and they ended up staying all night. The restaurant fed them for free. There was a couple in there with a 3-month-old baby named Luke. Everyone there knew Luke and entertained Luke before the ordeal was over. My co-workers left our office at noon on Tuesday. They finally got home around 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday.<br />
<br />
Another friend of mine left our office at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday. She arrived home at 12:43 a.m. on Wednesday completely stressed and exhausted.<br />
<br />
Another friend of mine left our office at noon. It took her 13 hours to get home. She came very close to running out of gas but miraculously made it up an exit ramp around many abandoned cars, cars that couldn't get up the ramp because of the ice, cars that had simply run out of gas. Before she made it to the gas station, she had used a big cup and an old t-shirt in her car in lieu of a restroom. I heard many similar stories.<br />
<br />
One of our partners had been down in Orlando. The airline emailed him on Tuesday to let him know his flight to Atlanta had been canceled. They emailed him again and said they were re-routing him to LaGuardia and then to Atlanta. Then they canceled that. They emailed him again and said they were sending him from Orlando to Minneapolis to La Guardia to Atlanta. He decided to rent a car and try to drive. He got as far as Macon which is south of Atlanta and the state patrol had the roads closed. They were not allowing anyone to drive into the Atlanta area because things were so awful here. So he spent the night in Macon and got to Atlanta the next afternoon. <br />
<br />
But in the midst of chaos, the beautiful human spirit shined. People gave total strangers a ride when they needed one. People let complete strangers spend the night in their homes. People stood out on the streets handing out sandwiches, hot chocolate, granola bars, bottled water, etc. that they prepared in their homes to people who had been stranded in the cars overnight. Home Depots opened their doors along with Publix, Kroger, CVS, Walgreens, etc. Was sleeping on the floor of a grocery store fun? I would suspect it was fairly miserable but at least they had access to restrooms, food, water, and warmth. Pharmacists got life saving medications to people who were stuck away from home without them. Ambulances carried high school students off a school bus to a Kroger grocery store. The manager allowed them to help themselves to anything they wanted to eat and drink for free. Some bus drivers spent 16 hours or more trying to get kids safely home. And then they had long drives to get to their own homes after that. Neighbors helped neighbors. Strangers helped strangers. New friendships were formed.<br />
<br />
So yes, we know a lot of the country was laughing at us, shaking their heads, calling us imbeciles and dumbasses. But I assure you there was nothing funny happening. People struggled. People cried. People suffered. I was blessed and I know it. I made it home safely and in a relatively short time. <br />
<br />
It is a day Atlantans will never forget. Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-16822031781399571872014-01-31T14:44:00.000-05:002014-01-31T14:44:27.592-05:00My heart is destroyedWhat.<br />
<br />
A.<br />
<br />
Week.<br />
<br />
And not a good one.<br />
<br />
Do y'all remember just last week I told you Bailey seemed to be doing much better and had started using her litter box and all that good stuff? She was climbing up in the dishwasher, acted interested in stuff, etc. In fact 3 nights in a row last week she was waiting at the door when I got home from work and bolted outside to sniff stuff. She was acting all perky and sassy and for the first time in forever she actually didn't stink so I could stand to have her near me.<br />
<br />
When I left for work last Friday morning, she was peppy, eating, running around and seeming like she was fine. Friday night when I got home, she wasn't waiting at the door. I went in, turned the alarm off, I was about to pee my pants so I ran to the bathroom and she never came to greet me as she had done for almost 14.5 years.<br />
<br />
I looked around and found her on the heat vent in my dining room. She looked at me pitifully. And a few minutes later she got up to come in the kitchen for some food and water and she seemed to have a slight limp and it appeared to be her right rear leg. I checked it out and didn't feel anything out of the ordinary. She was walking on it and she liked to drink out of the toilets (even though I gave her nice fresh water in a bowl) and she was able to jump up on the toilet seat so I didn't feel like it was broken or anything. She wasn't crying in pain when walking, jumping or when I touched it. So I assumed she had just bruised it or pulled a muscle or something. And I decided to just watch her over the weekend.<br />
<br />
At some point on Sunday night she tried to jump up on an ottoman and she fell. But she walked off, still with only the slightest limp and wasn't moaning or crying in pain. She later was able to jump up on the toilet seat with no problem.<br />
<br />
On Monday, I talked to a friend/co-worker of mine who has a farm and has approximately 20 cats. I told her the symptoms and she agreed - she said I would definitely know if it was broken because she would have been crying in pain and would not put any weight on it and probably wouldn't have let me touch her. She suggested I just keep watching her, try to make her rest as much as possible and if it went on for a while I should probably take her to the vet and have it checked.<br />
<br />
I came home from work Monday night and Bailey did not greet me at the door.<br />
<br />
And she never will again.<br />
<br />
I found her dead in the middle of my kitchen floor.<br />
<br />
Oh, y'all. It was just awful. It looked like she had been standing there and just fell over on her side. All four legs were straight out in front of her, her beautiful eyes were still open and my heart broke right in half. I've never had an indoor pet before and so I've never been through the death of a pet that I was this attached to and spent so much time with. I can't stand it.<br />
<br />
When I told my co-worker/friend, she said that at least it sounds like it was instantaneous and that she would suspect it was a heart attack and I should believe that Bailey did not suffer. I didn't even know cats could have a heart attack. Maybe that sounds dumb, but I really didn't. But based on the position of her body, the fact that her eyes were still open, and that she didn't crawl off somewhere and hide, she said it sounds like it was instantaneous and even Bailey didn't know it was coming. <br />
<br />
Y'all, I am so sad. I'm so heartbroken. I miss her so much.<br />
<br />
It was pitch dark when I got home Monday night so I couldn't see in my backyard to dig her a grave. And as y'all know by now, we had that ridiculous snow/ice storm coming on Tuesday. I placed her in a box and I went out early Tuesday morning to bury her before I went to work.<br />
<br />
Of course this didn't go smoothly.<br />
<br />
I was going to bury her behind my detached garage because I knew I would never do any landscaping back there and she would be undisturbed. I started digging a hole with the shovel my dad had given me only a month or two before he died of a heart attack a year and a half ago. And let me tell you that is the first time I've used his shovel (it was an extra so he had used it for years probably) and the tears were flowing. I was using my dead dad's shovel to bury my dead cat. Oh it was awful.<br />
<br />
I dug a decently deep hole and then I ran into plumbing stuff.<br />
<br />
I filled that hole back in and moved down a few feet and started digging again. And I ran into plumbing stuff again. Yes. Seriously.<br />
<br />
So I filled the second hole back in and moved out from behind my garage and found a special spot in my back yard and started digging a third hole. Finally I found the right spot. I guess Bailey didn't want to be stuck behind the garage for eternity. I can't blame her.<br />
<br />
Since it was the third hole I had dug and it was 7:30 a.m. and about 18 degrees outside, my back was hurting, the shoulder and elbow of the arm I broke in 4 places was killing me, and I was crying like crazy. Honestly, I was just exhausted and I couldn't dig a very deep hole by that point. I dug enough to get her covered and then I went in the garage and got a giant bag of soil conditioner that was left from last spring, and I poured the entire thing over her grave and I then went to work hoping like hell that nothing would come along and dig her up.<br />
<br />
By the time I got home from work with the ice and snow and fiasco that was Atlanta that afternoon and evening (which I will blog about another time), my driveway was a solid sheet of ice so I had to park my car up at the front of my house. I haven't even been back there to check on her since I buried her because I haven't been able to get down my driveway yet. Hopefully it should all be melted today.<br />
<br />
At this point, I don't feel like I can ever have another cat. Because I never want to feel like this again.<br />
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<b>Bailey</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>July, 1999 - January, 2014</b></div>
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Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-84847848907591902162014-01-22T16:43:00.000-05:002014-01-22T16:43:02.084-05:00Aging. It sucks.There was a tiny bit of drama in the 'hood on Sunday night. My cat has suddenly decided to poop in her box again. My cousin's autistic son has a girlfriend. And I got all felt up today.<br />
<br />
Now you're all caught up on my life since I last blogged.<br />
<br />
I wish I had something exciting to tell y'all about Friday and Saturday but I don't. Oh wait a minute. Friday night after work I went to the art supply store to buy some materials for the two large commission paintings I have to do for the partner here at my office. The guy working in the store said straight to my face that I am crazy. <br />
<br />
I told him I had seen a certain type of canvas on their website (it was a particular gallery style canvas with 2.25" sides) in the size I needed (24" x 48" - yes I have to paint TWO paintings that are each four feet long and two feet wide). I found the brand and type of canvas but could not find them in 24x48 so I asked this cute young thing for help. He looked around the store with me and couldn't find it and then he looked it up in their system and said they don't carry that type of canvas in that size so he could not even order it for me. I insisted I had seen it on their website 3 hours earlier and he told me I am crazy. I agreed with him and then I bought a different canvas. He was very nice about telling me I am crazy and then he helped me carry all of my supplies to my car. Sadly, that was the most exciting part of my Friday.<br />
<br />
Saturday was even less exciting.<br />
<br />
Sunday I cleaned my house for 6 hours straight and then I was on the sofa and suddenly sirens were coming from everywhere. I looked out the window and there were 3 cop cars parked right in front of my house. And there were two more cops at the corner blocking the cross street right by my house. "Hmmmmm," I thought. Because I think deep and profound kinds of thoughts.<br />
<br />
A minute or two later, a fire truck arrived. They honked a lot and moved their truck around to a few different places and it was all very confusing. Then I saw 3 firefighters open the hood of a pick up truck parked in front of my next door neighbors' house and they were just shining a flashlight in it and looking at it for about 10 minutes. I don't know if they were cute or not because I had just taken a shower, had wet hair, no make-up on, and was wearing a white t-shirt with horrible paint stains all over it. And no bra. Not exactly the appropriate look for going outside and flirting with some potentially hot guys in uniform. And then I had a horrid thought that if they had to evacuate our 'hood for some crazy reason I would be mortified to open the door for them.<br />
<br />
Eventually they left the scene and that was about as exciting as my Sunday got. The next day the pick-up truck was gone so I have no idea what was going on.<br />
<br />
This post is absolutely riveting so far, isn't it. It's just like my life.<br />
<br />
On Monday our office was closed for MLK Day so I went to my cousin's house and we played games all day. She has 3 boys and the 12-year-old is autistic. I found out he has a girlfriend at school. He's fairly severe on the autism spectrum and says very few words. But he kept saying her name and had a giant grin on his face. He is SUCH a sweetheart and it made my heart happy to see him all excited about her. He kept trying to sit in my lap but he had on slippery nylon style sweat pants and kept sliding off into the floor. Then my aunt made hamburgers and I asked for mine to be well-done. I could barely bite into it when she gave it to me because it was more burnt to a shoe leather consistency instead of just being well-done. But I just said, "YUM! This is SO good," because I'm a nice polite southern girl and that's what we do.<br />
<br />
Last night after work I went to June Gardens' favorite place: Ulta. I've been using Bare Minerals for many years and I have loved it. Suddenly in the past 6 months or so I have stopped loving it so much. It's been very cakey looking and orange/yellow-ish looking even though I'm using the same shade. I decided to go find myself a new foundation last night. <br />
<br />
Did y'all know Calvin Klein has a make-up line? I did not. Anyway, that's what one of the girls in Ulta recommended for me. <a href="http://www.ulta.com/ulta/browse/productDetail.jsp?productId=xlsImpprod4270187" target="_blank">This is a link to what I got</a> and after using it this morning, I think I'm going to love it. When I was paying for my stuff, she gave me a bunch of free samples of day moisturizer, night cream, conditioner for my hair, a face spritzer, a little make-up bag, etc. <br />
<br />
As I got back in my car, I managed to get my purse strap all tangled up around the rear view mirror and I do not even know how that happened. But it was dumb.<br />
<br />
This morning I went the specialist to get my girls checked out. And y'all, my girl parts are going to be the most well checked out girl parts in all of the United States before this year is over. I've already had my pap smear and ultrasound all up in my hoo-ha which resulted in a visit to the oncologist for another physical exam and then the MRI last week. Which I loved so much.<br />
<br />
This morning I was at the specialist for 3 hours. Oh, it was fun. I had a mammogram. And then they did an ultrasound on my girls. And then I had a regular physical exam of my girls. And then I finally met the doctor. And do you know what I have to do now???<br />
<br />
Do you????<br />
<br />
I have to have ANOTHER FREAKING MRI. They saw nothing on the mammogram or the ultrasound but because of my horrid and insane family history of breast cancer, she wants me to do a 6-month follow-up in the form of an MRI to get a really thorough check of them. So in July, it's back in that stupid tube again. This place I went to this morning enters a bunch of data about you into some sort of formula and it calculates your risk of getting breast cancer and my risk is twice that of the normal population. And she said they only factor in your mother so mine is really much higher than that because of all of my other family members with breast cancer and other types of cancer. <br />
<br />
And, guess what else?<br />
<br />
She wants me to have genetic testing and counseling done. <br />
<br />
And guess what else?<br />
<br />
When I go back in 3 months to have my hoo-ha ultrasound again to follow-up on the fibroid I have to meet with the oncologist again. The doctor from this morning said to check with the oncologist about possibly starting on Tamoxifen and getting all of my other organs scanned for different types of cancer and I should ask her what order they should be scanned in.<br />
<br />
Holy crap y'all. Now I understand that quote about growing old not being for sissies.<br />
<br />
And why does my family have to be the crazy cancer family?Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-52356499292604854802014-01-16T17:30:00.000-05:002014-01-16T17:36:12.999-05:00What's up doc?The fact that this is what my desk looks like at this moment should show you why I haven't blogged in a couple of days and why I really should not be blogging right now:<br />
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And honestly, why don't I have an oven in my cubicle to throw all of this crap in? Isn't that what people do when their house is a mess and people are coming over on short notice? They throw everything in the oven. I don't do that because my house is always spotless and visitor ready. Bah! That's a total lie, y'all. I have a cat who craps everywhere.<br />
<br />
I once had a boss who was a neat FREAK. He got upset if I had a post-it and a pen sitting on my desk if I wasn't actually using them when he walked by. His wife was a housewife and she had weekly bridge parties and luncheons so sometimes she would set the table the night before for a luncheon and it would burn his butt. He told me one day when he came in that he took all of the plates and stuck them under the sofa cushions because he didn't like it when she set the table the night before because then there was, you know, stuff where it shouldn't be. Another day he told me that she left her shoes in the living room floor so he took them and hid them in the oven. And how he has been married for about 60 years I have no idea because I would not last with him.<br />
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Also, my desk does not dip and curve in the middle. I used the panorama feature on my iPhone camera and guess what I'm not good at?<br />
<br />
Anyway, MY POINT IS that I have been busy and that's why I haven't blogged for a couple of days.<br />
<br />
The nurse from the oncologist's office called me yesterday and asked when I was having my MRI and I told her I had it on Monday and they told me it would take 48 hours or so for the results. "That's what they always tell y'all," she said as she laughed. "I'll find out what's going on and call you back."<br />
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She called me back a couple of hours later and said my doctor had looked at the MRI and at this point she just wants to keep monitoring my toooommmah so I have to go back for an ultrasound in 3 months. So yay! I think that means I'm going to keep all of my womenses parts for now.<br />
<br />
But the oncologist's office does not have an ultrasound machine onsite so I have to go back to my regular OB/GYN doctor for that and then go back to the oncologist to discuss the results of everything in person. I called my regular doctor to make an appointment and they don't have their schedules out for even 2 months from now.<br />
<br />
Next week I go to another specialist to get my boobs totally checked out really good and more closely than a regular mammogram because I have a really bad family history so my doctor is being extra careful. I've also had cysts up in that area twice and now I have the fibroid tumor trying to grow like the Jolly Green Giant down below and maybe it would be better to get all my parts taken out and be done with all of this.<br />
<br />
So now I have my boobs to worry me and stew about and fret over.<br />
<br />
I've had all of this medical stuff on my mind and there is another situation I've been fretting over which I don't want to discuss on here and all I do is work, go home, eat dinner, go to bed and watch TV because I just haven't felt all fun and happy for the past few weeks. And do you know what? It's hard to blog every day when you aren't doing anything worth blogging about.<br />
<br />
But one of our managing partners has asked me to do a commission art piece for him so I may give it a go and see if painting will snap me out of this funk I am in. Painting usually cures all that ails me.<br />
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Deb was asking about my cat's poop in the comments the other day so I guess I do have that to blog about. Just what y'all come here for, right?<br />
<br />
I ordered the powder stuff Deb told me about and when I had Bailey on the raw food diet that had to be shipped in on angel's wings from the other side of the country and was costing me more than people food which does not add up when you are trying to budget your life, I was sprinkling that powder and mixing it in to the disgusting raw food that looks like slimy raw ground beef and trying to not to hurl as I did it. Even though she was still having explosive and disgusting diarrhea all over my house, I faithfully mixed up that disgusting food twice a day.<br />
<br />
For about 3 weeks, Bailey inhaled the stuff. It was as though she had been deprived for 14 years of decent food and I was finally treating her right. And then one morning she turned her nose up at it. So I gave her the raw food without the powder sprinkled on it. She still turned her nose up at it. I thought she was taking a turn for the worse and that she was going to stop eating. She was lethargic, losing more weight, making messes all over my house, and now not eating. I was getting prepared to have to put her down. I could feel every bone in her itty bitty self when I picked her up. Her ribs were poking out and she looked like she is all legs.<br />
<br />
One night I was at Disco Kroger near my office getting groceries and I decided to check out their dry foods and canned foods to see if there was anything else I could possibly try before I threw in the towel and had to say goodbye to her.<br />
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I found a grain free dry cat food that says it's good for digestion. If you think about it, all of that stuff they put in cat food is not stuff cats ever eat in the wild. Have you ever seen a cat in the jungle eating a bowl of rice, a baked potato, a slice of toast, or a corn cob? No. They eat meat and grass. Probably a few other things, but not rice, potatoes, bread and corn.<br />
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I looked online later and it seems they've had a dog food out for a while but this cat food just came out last summer. It was only $13.99 a bag as opposed to $110 for the raw food (YES, Y'ALL - ONE HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS FOR CAT FOOD) so I figured it was worth a shot. I slowly mixed it in with the raw food until I transitioned her to this new stuff. And then I gave all of the raw food I had left to a lady in my office who has a farm with over 20 cats.<br />
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I've had Bailey on it since the week of Christmas and she loves it. We now have fully formed turds all over my house instead of puddles of watery diarrhea. Trust me, it is a blessing to be cleaning up turds after a year and a half of the other. But I really have to figure out how to get her back to using her litter box because I AM OVER THIS. She seems to be getting her spunk back. She's developed a new fascination with climbing in my dishwasher every single time I open the door which is kind of making me insane but I'm glad to have her acting like she's interested in something. She's talking a lot to me again. And last night when I picked her up (which I've hardly been able to do because she has smelled so awful for so long I can't stand to be close to her) it felt like she is possibly starting to put some weight back on. Her ribs didn't seem to be quite as pokey.<br />
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She still smells like ass though.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-4646905331218284082014-01-13T17:47:00.002-05:002014-01-13T17:47:23.625-05:00Em RRRRRR EyeI had my MRI this morning to get my toomah checked out. <br />
<br />
Um, y'all. Having an MRI is not at all fun. I'm not claustrophobic, but I think if I ever have to have one again I will lie and tell them I am so they can sedate me for the whole blasted thing.<br />
<br />
For those of you who have never had one, they are very concerned about whether you have any metal in your body or if your kidneys aren't any good. They asked me at the oncologist's office before they called the hospital to schedule my MRI. The hospital called and asked me. An MRI tech called me and asked me. They had me fill out a buttload of forms this morning and asked me multiple times. The tech doing the MRI asked me several more times. And miraculously with all of my falls and broken bones, I have no metal parts. And I didn't get stuck in the machine (it's a magnet, y'all) so I guess no one has managed to sneak anything metal in me that I didn't know about.<br />
<br />
Anyway, they sent me in a dressing room and had me put on two hospital gowns because just one isn't awful enough and told me to walk down the hall a little ways and put my stuff in a locker and have a seat.<br />
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I suppose it's because the MRI place is in the same office I normally go every year for my mammogram or something, but I just stupidly assumed that it would be all women back in the waiting area.<br />
<br />
So I pranced down the hall to the lockers with my humongous bra (I'm a 44DD) hanging over my arm and there was an older man I would guess was in his 70s sitting there staring with his mouth hanging open. His wife sitting next to him gave me a major stink eye. And you know it couldn't have been a boring old white bra that I decided to put on this morning. Or a tan bra. Or even a black bra with a little lace. Red would have even been okay. Oh no! This is the bra I was wearing today and I am not kidding. <br />
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Nope, it was a HUGE bright orange bra with giant bright purple polka dots and purple stripes and I was just walking down the hall with it like I was cool. I quickly stuffed everything in a locker and luckily there was a half-wall separating the area where the older couple was sitting and another waiting area and I sat away from them. I didn't want to get the stink eye from that lady for even one more second.<br />
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As I waited for my tech to come back, another tech brought a jar of something for the man to drink. The tech told him as soon as he drank it they would take him back. He took a couple of swigs and then I heard him ask his wife, "Hey! Do you wanna drink part of this for me so I can get started sooner? This crap is terrible!" I then had a horrid feeling that I was going to have to drink a jar of nasty stuff too.<br />
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Thankfully, I did not have to drink a jar of nasty stuff.<br />
<br />
My tech took me back and got me set up on the table and explained that I had to not move a muscle for 45 minutes while I was in a tiny tunnel with something that sounded like two jack hammers and a bunch of buzzing and beeping going on around me. That sounded like a ton of fun, and I'm here to tell you that she described it to an absolute tee. I had a pad thing with a velcro strap secured TIGHTLY around my stomach/pelvis area, a rolled up towel under my knees, my hands were straight up in the air over my head, I had towels over both arms, a blanket on me and earplugs stuck in each ear. And I was wearing two hospital gowns and black socks. I've never felt sexier in my life.<br />
<br />
They raise the table and then you go sliding into the tunnel and when you are a bigger person like me, let's just say there isn't much spare room around you. They put you through a series of scans. Some are a minute and a half and some are five minutes and those five minutes feel like they last five days. There is buzzing and clunking and beeping, and there is a part where the tech comes over the loudspeaker and says you have to hold your breath for 30 seconds because all of the other stuff you're going through isn't bad enough.<br />
<br />
After about 30 minutes of that which seemed like 30 years, she brought me back out of the machine. Then she tied a really tight rubber band around each arm looking for a good vein because I had to have an MRI with contrast dye and they give it to you through an IV. My left shoulder still gets really stiff when I have it in one position for any length of time from when I broke my humerus and got a rotator cuff impingement from being immobile for 3 months. So it felt really good to get to move my arm again. But as soon as she gave me the contrast dye and then a flush of saline, it was back into the machine.<br />
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She told me I only had one more scan to get through and that I was doing a terrific job of not moving and not freaking the hell out from being in that tube for so long. So obviously as soon as the scan started the worst tickle in my throat started at the same time. Y'all, I tried so hard not to cough but I couldn't hold it in and I started coughing my fool head off. The scan kept going and I kept on coughing.<br />
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I kept apologizing and she kept telling me I was doing great. She then came running in, quickly got the table out of the tube, yanked on my arm to sit me up and was afraid I was having an allergic reaction to the contrast dye. She kept checking the IV site and my neck to see if I was turning red, asking me if my throat was closing up, etc. I told her I simply had a tickle in my throat but she made me sit there with her for 15 minutes and drink a bunch of water to make sure I was okay. She told me that even with all of the coughing I did, I managed to not move my stomach and pelvic area too much so the scan was okay and she didn't have to do it again. Thank you, God!<br />
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Anyway, the radiologist will read the MRI, send a report to my doctor and hopefully I will know something in the next 48 - 72 hours.<br />
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I will not freak out. I will not freak out. I will not freak out. I will not freak out.<br />
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<br />Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1338401009962739587.post-50115961344890023922014-01-08T17:59:00.003-05:002014-01-08T17:59:37.225-05:00If I didn't have to work for "the man"Hey, I'm not sure if y'all have heard or not, but it's been cold this week. <br />
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Today I have been printing my little heart out at work. Seriously. For the past 3.5 hours I've been hitting print, rolling back across my cubicle to the printer, pulling crap off the printer. Repeat approximately 843045843594359 times. I've been listening to music for a lot of the time and, because I try hard not to be an asshole, I've been using headphones since I am surrounded by other people in cubicles and they may not want to listen to Run DMC, James Brown, Michael Franti, Donovan Frankenreiter, Deee-Lite, Citizen Cope, Paolo Nutini, etc. It got very scary for a moment when Lily Allen's "F**k You" was blasting and I pulled a little too far backwards and I pulled the headphone wire out of my computer. And it happened again when James Brown was wanting to "Get Up Offa That Thing."<br />
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And as I sat here printing and printing and printing, I thought to myself a few times that this is not at all what I thought I'd be doing with my life when I was struggling through completely unnecessary college classes such as Geology (because I have never needed to know what rocks are made of while working here at my law firm) or Algebra or that horrid Biology lab I had to take dealing with fruit flies. And don't even get me started on the Animal Psychology lab I took when I had to decide if horses have best friends and go to the bookstore and buy a sheep brain and keep it in my refrigerator at home with a note on it for my roommates that said "DO NOT EAT. THIS IS A SHEEP BRAIN IN HERE" and study whether worms give off pheromones to try and get sexy time with other worms. I mean, I didn't think I'd ever do anything dealing with rocks, math, fruit flies or dissecting brains either, but I certainly didn't think I was suffering through that crap so that 20+ years later I could sit in a cubicle and print 4 reams of paper in an afternoon on a regular basis.<br />
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So then I started daydreaming about what I would do if I won a bazillion dollars in the lottery.<br />
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First of all, I wouldn't sit in a cubicle and print crap all day anymore.<br />
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And this is where y'all are going to realize what a selfish person I am when I tell you the kind of stuff I would do if I had an almost unlimited supply of money.<br />
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I would hire a doctor to give me drugs every night to help me sleep. But not Propofol like Michael Jackson. I am tired all of the time. I want to sleep. And I would sleep late every single day. <br />
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I would hire a personal assistant to do all of the crap I hate doing - grocery shopping, filling out forms, laundry, sorting my mail, making appointments, etc. (If I ever win the lottery I would advise none of you to apply because you would hate everything I asked you to do.) <br />
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I would travel all over the world: Iceland (yes, I've always wanted to go there), Holland, France, Spain, England, South Africa, New Zealand, and on and on.<br />
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I would try to bribe some government officials to let Hot Brazilian get around the pesky Visa issues he's dealing with so he can get back here and then travel all over with me. I think I would. I'm a little perturbed with him right now and I don't want to talk about it. But if I get over being perturbed with him I would do this.<br />
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Okay, I just took a potty break and saw myself in the mirror so I need to add that I would hire a makeup artist and hair stylist to make me look at least half-way presentable each day.<br />
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I would loan some money to my family and friends but I'm sorry, I'm not going to completely support you. Go win your own lottery, okay?<br />
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I would give quite a bit of money to my cousin with an autistic son to pay for intense therapy he needs but which they cannot afford.<br />
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I would do a good bit of volunteer work - soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc. I would love to say I'd help out at animal shelters, but I'm deathly allergic to dogs. I'll give them some money though.<br />
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I'd spend a lot of time painting and I'd buy a huge studio instead of the bedroom I use now. Yes, I do feel blessed that I even have a bedroom devoted to art, but I'd love to have a space I can get all messy in and drip paint on the floor and not worry about it.<br />
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I'd probably stay in my current house. But I'd add a covered area on my back deck because it is way to hot and sunny in the summer out there, I'd put screens on all of my windows so that I can open them and enjoy cool fall days and evenings, and I'd have all of my plumbing and electric replaced so I could cut down on the ongoing repairs I deal with.<br />
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I think I'd also buy a place in New York City. <br />
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I WOULD HIRE A FULL-TIME CHEF. Oh, how I don't cook.<br />
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So basically, I want to live like I'm pretty sure the Kardashians live although I've never watched their show and I could be really wrong. Except I do not want a camera following me around like them.<br />
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What would y'all do if you had unlimited money? I'm guessing it would probably be way less selfish stuff than me.<br />
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Deb in Denver, I will answer your question about Bailey and her poop tomorrow. I ran out of time today!<br />
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And I know this is a stupid post, but I'm writing this in a huge rush, y'all. If I won the lottery I wouldn't have to do that.Beverlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716376840580534410noreply@blogger.com19