Criminals in my yard and criminals in my mouth. Story of my life.

Remember how I told y’all the last time my mom came and stayed at my house that she is completely against over sharing on the internet?  Well, she was back in town again last week staying at my house so I could not come here and over share with y’all on the internet.  If she saw me sitting down and writing all of this stuff on my blog while she was visiting from out of state and wanting to spend time with me, I might be disowned.  That’s why I didn’t blog.  

Her birthday was the week before she came to Atlanta so I took her for a belated birthday gift to a play at a local small community theater because we both love doing that (and if my friend Liz is reading, I know she’ll be happy to hear that since she acts and sings and is all kind of fabulous in the theater out in Tulsa), we visited family, etc.  I took a couple of vacation days to spend with her and one afternoon we decided to chill on the sofa for a few minutes before we got dressed to go to the play and suddenly my mom gasped and said there was a huge dog in my front yard. 

Now I know that most of us are all, “PUPPY!  PUPPY!  PUPPY!” all the time around here, but I have to be honest:  (1) I am about as allergic to dogs as you can possibly get (as in almost having to go to the emergency room several times over the years because I’ve almost stopped breathing and prescription breathing meds were not working even a tiny bit); and (2)  I am not a fan of interacting with a strange dog (and he was HUGE) with no collar that I’ve never seen in my ‘hood before who has somehow gotten into my yard even though it is completely fenced in, the front gate was closed and latched, there are no holes under any portion of my fence, and the dog looks super irritated that it can’t figure out how to get back out.  It went all over my front yard.  Up on the front porch.  All over my backyard.  Up and down my driveway.  Back and forth.  Pacing.  Pacing.  Pacing.  And looking more and more upset.  My mom wouldn’t go out there at all.  So I waited until it went in the back yard, then grabbed a security bar that I keep under my door knob so I could use it as a weapon if the dog suddenly attacked me (because I’m all filled up with the drama), ran outside and opened the front gate then dashed back inside before it figured out I was outside.  I may or may not have been in my pajamas with no bra on when I did this since my mom and I had been thoroughly enjoying a pj day.  He finally found his way out and then went into all of the neighbors’ yards checking them out.  My neighbor across the street ran him off from her yard with a broom.  Some people were walking down the sidewalk and they started screaming when it approached them (apparently my ‘hood is also full of the drama) and then it went further down the street out of sight. 

So that’s pretty much the exciting end of that sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat story.  I know y’all just kept waiting for something actually interesting to happen and then I just disappoint, right?  Did the dog attack her?  Did the dog start licking her to death?  Did the dog really want to find someone to help rescue someone a la Lassie?  No.  The dog just went into some other yards and then walked on down the street out of sight.  You are all glad I shared this story with you, right? 

Then I was unable to blog because I had a 12-year-old boy staying with me at my house all weekend.  Because I’m a total perv.  I love me a 12-year-old boy.  (I hope y’all know I’m kidding.  Do not call the authorities and send them after me.)  It was my cousin’s son and they live not too far out of Atlanta, but they never go downtown and do stuff.  He went to the High Museum on a field trip recently and he said that while the art was pretty cool, his favorite part was seeing all of the tall buildings and watching the people walking around.  He was convinced all of the people walking around downtown were cool college kids.  For his birthday, I told him he could stay with me and we would go downtown and look at tall buildings and see weird people and for some odd reason that sounded like the most awesome birthday gift he had ever received from anyone. 

My mom and I took him to my house Friday night with us and he spent the night.  We had to take my mom to the airport at noon on Saturday so I took them to a great little breakfast place near my ‘hood, then we went to the bookstore because he loves reading (I adore a boy who loves to read…and isn’t afraid to admit it) and then headed to the airport.  I then realized he had probably never been on MARTA (Atlanta’s train system) so even though I live about 3 miles from where I was taking him and could have driven there in about 10 minutes, I  took him downtown on the train which took about an hour each way with the stops and train changes, etc..  Thank goodness I did though since that was his favorite thing we did all day.  He also thought I was nuts when I got into a conversation about incense with a random girl riding the train.  There was a crazy dude walking through the train selling incense and she struck up a conversation with me about how much she loves incense but that dude’s incense “were all crumbly and shit” and that they stunk when he walked past her. 

I took him (my cousin’s son, not the crazy dude selling incense on the train) smack into the middle of downtown and into a hotel that my dad used to take us in as kids because it’s fairly tall without being overwhelming (we went up to the 41^st), and my cousin’s son was terrified and said he felt nauseous.  Also, there was a biker convention of some sort going on and they were all staying at that hotel so he got to see some interesting people (and lots and lots of leather). 

Then, because he loves music a lot, I took him to The Hard Rock Café for lunch because I thought he would love it.  Not so much.  He said he had never heard of most of the artists when I pointed out memorabilia from different people I thought he would know (I then felt like the old hag I am because he had never heard of Sheryl Crow, James Brown, Collective Soul, or Johnny Cash), he was completely mortified when half of the staff and customers stood up and danced all the animated moves to Y.M.C.A.,  and I was only half-way done with my sandwich when he announced that he was ready to go because it was too loud.  Too loud?!  You’re a 12-year-old boy!  I’m a 44-year-old woman and I was having a blast.  The restaurant is across the street from the Peachtree Plaza Hotel so I asked him if he wanted to go up in that elevator (it’s almost twice as high as the one we had been in earlier).  He said I must be crazy.  Which?  Yes.  Yes I am. 

He said what he really wanted to was go back to my house and play board games but first he wanted to stop at Target to look around on the way back.  Crazy incense dude was on the train going back too.  So our big, fun, exciting day in the city was a little bit of a bust, but I think he still had a great time even though it sounds like I tortured him with scary elevators and loudness.  And my awesome Y.M.C.A. moves. 

He’s at that age where he mumbles and is too cool to act very excited about anything but when his mom came to pick him up the next day he told her he wasn’t ready to go home and wanted to keep staying with me.  And I had to explain to him that it is not always fun and games at my house like it had been all weekend.  Sometimes it’s full of toilet cleaning and litter box scooping too.  After he left and I had somewhat put my house back together (he and/or my cat pulled curtains down out of the window in one room while chasing each other and we had approximately 2645987980 board games pulled out all over my dining room table), I crashed on the sofa and could not get back up.  Kids wear me out.  I don’t know how parents do it. 

In other news, some of y’all wanted to hear a story about something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago.  Only now I’m not sure what I thought happened is what really happened.  I hope this is all going to make sense.  I fall asleep on my sofa a lot.  I wake up sometime between 2:30 and 3:30 about 99.99999% of the time and I usually decide to just stay on the sofa instead of turning on lights and waking myself up to get upstairs to my bedroom.  Yes, I need the lights on so I won’t trip and fall and break an arm again because I’m not exactly the most graceful person on earth if y’all haven’t figured that out already. 

Anyway, I woke up just before 3:00 a.m. one morning and went to the restroom (because remember: I am an old hag.  I have to pee several times in the night which I love so much).  As I was walking back to the living room, I realized my flood lights were on at the front of my house and they only turn on when the motion detector triggers them on.  So I proceeded to freak the heck out.  I looked out in the yard, saw that the front gate was still closed and latched just as I had left it, I then went to the back of the house and looked on the deck and out by my garage and in the back yard and saw nothing.  I ran to every window down the side of the house looking outside and saw nothing.  I stood silently so I could hear whoever was out there while looking out a window overlooking my driveway with my cell phone in one hand to call 911 and a broom in the other hand so I could hit them with the handle when they broke into my house which I was 100% convinced they were going to do.  (And please don’t tell me I should get a gun.  That is not going to happen.  I have now spoken on that idea.  Amen.)  I felt like I was going to either hyperventilate or have a heart attack.  This was all just because the light was on.  I had seen no one.  I had heard no one.  And yet there I was freaking in the dining room.  I tiptoed back up to the front window, crouched down below it so the scary person I knew was out there couldn’t see me, and slowly raised up just enough to peek over the bottom edge of the window sill and looked out.  And that’s when I saw him! 

The stupid stray cat on the sidewalk in front of my house, that is. 

That’s all that was out there, y’all.  I never saw a person.  Eventually the stupid light went back out, and I put the broom back in the closet and made my way back to the sofa.  I finally managed to doze back off about an hour later feeling like a complete scaredy cat (see what I did there?) and also like a bit of an idiot.  And I went on for a few days assuming I had almost had a heart attack from a stray cat. 

But I could not stop thinking about it.  How would a small cat set off the motion detector light when it’s about 15 feet or more above the ground?  Why don’t the bazillion squirrels I have running around all over my property ever set it off?  A few days ago for some reason I happened to be on the backside of my garage and deck and I saw something that was moved in a different position than it had been previously when I was back there.  And I also saw a broom handle on the ground next to the windows of my crawlspace.  I checked everything out and none of the windows were busted out or anything and everything else looked like it should.  But now I can’t figure out how someone could have gotten back out of my property that night without me seeing them leave.  Of course I don’t know how long that broom handle had been on the ground because I don’t go over to that itty bitty space between that side of my house and the fence very often either so it may not have been left there that night.  It had been at least a month since I had looked back in there. 

There is no way to get out from that side of the house other than coming back around my house and up the driveway and the fence in my back yard is way too high to climb over (in fact, I’ve been told by a contractor that the height of my fence in the back and on that side of my house is illegal because rescue workers can’t get over it).  The front gate was still closed and latched.  From my sofa, I would have seen the light turn on again if they were anywhere on the driveway side of my house before I fell asleep again an hour later.  But I really don’t think it was that stray cat. 

A couple of days before this happened I was approached by a guy in my driveway when I arrived home from work one night.  He told me there is a guy in his late teens who works at the jewelry store the next street over (I have no clue what jewelry store he's talking about because I've been warned not to go on the next street over) who has been stealing cars in our 'hood.  Apparently he also stole a car in the shopping center up the street from me recently and hit this man's niece and she died.  So he was warning people about him.  I also had all of that in my mind when my lights were coming on in the middle of the night. 

This past week my toilet stopped working upstairs (my house, Daisy Jane’s Money Drain, is still living up to her name) so I’ve pretty much been sleeping on my sofa every night so I don’t have to go up and down the stairs to another bathroom a few times a night.  You can bet I am still a little freaked out and every single time I wake up, I make sure the light is not on out there. 

And in other news, as I commented on June’s blog, I found out a little over a week ago that my dentist has been arrested twice.  Someone told me about it so I checked online to confirm for myself.  Sure ‘nough.  I saw the mug shots and arrest records.  Once for drugs (possession of pot).  Once for property damage, assault, and cruelty to children.  When I went to have my teeth cleaned about a year ago, he was out and there was a temp dentist filling in for him (no pun intended).  I was told he had broken his hand while doing some remodeling in his basement.  I’m now guessing he remodels by beating things with his fist.  In front of his two young kids.  When I went back for a cleaning 6 months ago, they said he was out again because he had had a heart attack.  And then I called to confirm an appointment last month and they told me he was out because his license had lapsed when he was out for so long. 

So if anyone has a great dentist to recommend (locals, I’d like someone in-town near East Atlanta/Little 5 Points or in Buckhead), I sort of think it might be time for me to moving on from this guy.  I’m disappointed because I really liked him.  But dude apparently has some issues.  But has no license. 

That’s pretty much what I’ve been up to:  chasing off strange big dogs, going to plays (it’s based on the things that happen in a Waffle House in the middle of the night), acting like a tourist in my own town, wondering if someone is creeping around in my yard in the middle of the night and standing in my dining room in the middle of the night with a broom, and breaking up with my criminal dentist.  I’m now in the middle of trying to completely change my diet because I need to lose about 800 pounds.  So maybe we can talk about that next time.  What have y’all been up to?

Y'all are really still coming by to see if I've written anything?

Jane and a couple of other people called me out in the comments on BBP today for not blogging.  It's only been a month and 3 days since I've blogged.  Geez.  Y'all are so demanding.

Ima try to catch y'all up on the past month other than the normal boring work stuff I do because I've been doing a lot of that.  We're in the middle of a HUGE deal at my firm right now and we are all working late hours, the attorneys are all working weekends, etc.  This is a deal with a number so big it makes my head hurt.  I worked until 9:00 one night last week formatting a huge document.  And when I got in the next morning, I discovered my boss had sent me a copy of the document and not the actual document (because we have a super confusing doc management system that most of our firm hates and this very same thing has happened to tons of people so please don't think I'm an idiot) so the 12 hours of work I did on it?  None of it was saved on our system.  Our IT department searched all over my computer and could not find the version with all of my edits anywhere.  And the client needed it that morning to work on it and get it to their auditors. I hated everything that day.  And I still kind of hated everything by the day after that too.

But here's some of the stuff I've been up to over the past month that doesn't suck like that did.  Well, a couple of non-work things suck too, if I'm being honest.

I went out of town for a girls weekend with my aunt, two cousins, and one of their daughters.  My aunt bought my grandparents' house after they both passed away, so we went there.  Within 30 minutes of arriving, my cousin's 7-year-old daughter had me dressed up with purple fuzzy earmuffs and holding a sword and mace (both plastic, don't worry).  And then I had to have sword fights in the front yard.  The 2-year-old boy next door saw us and came and joined us as well.  And I had to run and hide all over the back yard.  And up and down the two stories of deck stairs.  And girlfriend, I am one out of shape blob.  I was dying.  Thankfully, we only did that for an hour or or so (although it felt like 10 hours at least) before she let me rest for a minute on the front porch.  I managed to turn it into resting until I left the next afternoon.  I had had enough sword fighting for one weekend.  Or possibly for the rest of my life.  I did play "spies" with her using walkie talkies.  I sent her on missions while I sat my fat butt on the porch and talked to her.  I mean it would not have hurt the size of my arse for me to do some more sword fighting and running around, but I really just didn't want to.

Okay.  I'm back.  Did y'all know I was gone in the middle of writing this post?  I was.  Hot Brazilian just called me from Brazil and we talked for an hour and a half.  And now I'm going to write for a little bit longer but because I just spent an hour and a half on Skype, I'm not going to write as much as I had planned because girlfriend is tired.  And it's late.  Also, after we hung up because he was about to drop from exhaustion because he had a super crazy weekend (not really in a good way) and he could not stay awake for one more minute, I had to fix all of the spelling and grammar on a very important email he's working on because English is definitely not his first language.  (Don't worry - I use proper grammar when I'm writing work stuff unlike this blog.)  Y'all, he speaks English fairly well and I always understand what he means when he writes, but if it's something important he has me "fix" it all for him.  Which is probably for the best because he once sent me an email to fix before he sent it (THANK GOODNESS) to the owner of a company trying to schedule a meeting which contained the sentence, "I'll be cumming to (name of city)" on some particular date.  And I wrote him back telling him to never, ever, ever use that word in a business email and then I had to explain the difference between "cumming" and "coming" while I was sitting at my desk with people surrounding me.  Fun is what that conversation was.  But there is a city just north of Atlanta called Cumming, GA and so he asked me about that.  To which I had no answer.  Because, really?  Cumming, GA?  Why would you call yourself that?  Of all the names in the world, y'all really went with that one?

So, I guess from that last paragraph you may have just figured out why I said earlier that some non-work stuff also sucks.  Hot Brazilian is still in Brazil.  He was supposed to be sitting here on my sofa with me as of the last week of December, but some Things I Cannot Discuss have come up (but have not cum up (oh how could I resist that one?)).  I am being understanding, but I am not happy about this change of plans.  And it's partially his fault but partially not and he has cried buckets because he wants to be back here so badly and I have cried the Big Ugly Scrunched Up and Screaming Face cry more than once and it has been a super depressing couple of weeks for both of us.  But I can't really go into any sort of detail here.  No, I don't know how much longer it will be before he's back.  Suck.  Suck. Suck.

This also means I spent New Year's Eve at my fun neighbors' house and we watched football.  Which is not really my favorite thing to do, but it certainly beat sitting at home alone and probably crying because Hot Brazilian was not here with me.  The game was over around 11, I helped clean up the food/kitchen, etc. and then the husband walked me home even though it's only 3 houses away because it was almost midnight in the 'hood.  At midnight I hate to tell you that I was standing at my kitchen counter sorting dried beans so I could soak them overnight and make ham and bean soup.  Whoa.  Don't you want to come spend NYE at my house next year?  Maybe we can match up socks to fold together.  Or carry the garbage outside to the trash can to celebrate.  Maybe you can think of something to rival sorting dried beans!  I am open to all household chores as a way to ring in the new year.  (Except for toilet cleaning.  I will draw the line there.)

Some other things I haven't caught you up on (I say this like y'all are really interested) include my weirdest Christmas ever, a baby (not mine!), another encounter with a crazy dude in my 'hood (I gave him some money and my friend blessed me out about it), my friend's obsession with people selling socks on Atlanta's public transportation, how I managed to completely ruin green bean casserole which is quite possibly one of the world's easiest dishes but I cook about as much as June Gardens, how a stray cat almost gave me a heart attack this weekend, my completely disastrous return to painting, and how I am obviously trying to bring sexy back with the outfit I put on when I got home from work tonight.  If any of those things sound interesting, let me know and I'll try to write about them. 

But right now I'm going to bed.  Even though I had a much calmer weekend than Hot Brazilian, I think I am almost as tired as he was when we hung up a while ago. (He had yet another car stuck in the mud in the middle of the jungle experience, but this time they walked 8 miles to a village and paid complete strangers to take showers, sleep in their house and be fed.  I, on the other hand, never sleep so I took two sleeping pills Friday night.  While I still woke up at 1:00, 3:30, 5:45, etc., I also never got out of my pj's on Saturday and didn't manage to get off the sofa until almost 3:00 p.m. because they made me so lethargic.)  First I ring in the new year sorting dried beans.  Then I spend all day on the couch in a coma.  I can see why y'all would want to keep coming back here.

I've never been a fan of having my picture taken. After this weekend, I never want to see a camera again as long as I live.

Hey y'all!

It's been another somewhat crazy week here in the 'hood.  I really don't know how June manages to post every single blasted day.  I'm in awe of her.

I can't even get through my emails anymore since my internet at work time has been slashed.  I can only get on for a minute here and there or if I eat lunch at my desk.  The partner who does our Friday Afternoon Song has even stopped doing it because he knows those of us who participate who are not attorneys will get in trouble with the way our temporary space is set up.  I MISS THE INTERNET, Y'ALL.  And I don't seem to get online much at home because I'm too busy keeping up with my Words with Friends, Hanging with Friends, Matching with Friends, and Trivie, and maybe I have a gaming problem on my phone.  I currently have 768 emails in my personal email in-box.  Crap!  How did that happen?  Oh yeah....games.  Letha and I have about 47484 Words with Friends games going on right now because I hit something and it just kept sending her new game invites.

I did manage to get my Christmas tree decorated.  I never got it completely straight.  Here's what I did before I posted a photo of my tree on Facebook for those of you who saw it:  I turned it so it's leaning backwards towards the bay window away from the camera.  I also got my mantle about halfway decorated, and I put up and decorated my tiny tinsel tree in the dining room, sort of did some Christmas-y type crap to my dining room table, and put up a bunch of Christmas themed paintings I taught when I worked at the studio.  Oh and the cheapest and ugliest plastic wreath you've ever seen is now on my front door.  I'm hoping it's so ugly no one will want to steal it.  It was given to me for free.  I didn't purposely go out and buy the ugliest wreath in all of Atlanta. 

I decorated my tree late this past Saturday night because I have no life and was home alone on a Saturday night.  Also, I was afraid if I sat down that night I would never get back up due to soreness.  Yes, two Saturdays in a row that I've been in pain.  Last Saturday it was raking and bagging leaves.  This weekend it was standing.  And standing.  And standing some more.  And then hours more of standing.  How in the hell can you get so sore from just standing?   

On Saturday I took almost 50 of my dad's cameras to a camera guy to have them appraised.  My entire SUV was packed with boxes of working cameras, antique cameras that just look good sitting on a shelf, lenses, tripods, filters, etc..  So I made 34746394 trips across the parking lot to take them all in to the camera shop.  And the guy kept asking, "You have some MORE cameras in your car?" and I kept replying, "YES!  There are still some freaking more cameras in my car.  I'm sick of carrying cameras!" 

Then I stood for SIX HOURS having cameras appraised.  He had some chairs, but I had cameras in them most of the day.  Every hour or so I'd sit for about 2 minutes then I'd have to stand back up to repack a box of cameras and move on to the next one.  Then I had to make 34746394 trips back out to my car to load them back up.  I got to his store about 10 minutes after he opened.  He turned the lights out, locked the doors and walked out with me when he closed.  I was there with him for his entire work day, y'all.  And that man didn't charge me a penny to appraise everything.  So gave him about $40 worth of filters, an antique case, etc. for his time.  He is amazing!  If you live in Atlanta and need to have a camera appraised let me know and I'll give you his information.  Apparently he's known world wide so I guess if any of you need his info I'll give it to you, not just those of you here in Atlanta.  He pulled out one antique camera, looked at it for literally 2 or 3 seconds and said, "this one is probably from just before 1920, they only made these for a few years, and it's worth about $50 or $60."  He then looked it up in a book.  It was made from 1914 - 1916 and it was worth around $70.  He has a collection of over 7,000 antique cameras.  He also repairs cameras, sells manual ones (absolutely does not deal with digital at all), and just loves to look at stuff people bring in for him to appraise.

But by the time I got home I could barely walk my feet hurt so bad.  I decided to keep moving instead of sitting down and watching the final quarter of the most sad football game all year (I'm a graduate of the University of Georgia and don't watch football but I still got caught up in the hype this weekend) so I cooked some dinner, cleaned the kitchen then decorated the tree.

Sunday my older brother and I went back out to my dad's to go through MORE boxes of paperwork and crap.  But we found some photos of my biological mom that neither of us had ever seen.  We found a birthday card she had given my dad back in the 60's.  I think it's the only time I've ever seen her handwriting.  And we didn't tell a single person we were going so my dad's wife didn't show up and, while I can't say it was the most pleasant thing to be doing on a Sunday afternoon - going through your dad's things because he has passed away, my brother and I had some good laughs and we have really been reconnecting quite a bit since we've been spending so much time together taking care of this awful business of going through my dad's things.

We also found some documents from our great-grandfather that date back to 1893.  So now there are two boxes of incredibly old paper sitting on my kitchen counter.  And we found some old newspapers from the 1940's including stuff about the war, the front page when FDR died, etc.  There are also framed photographs and some of them we have no clue about but they must be famous people because there were huge crowds surrounding them to hear what they had to say.  One we think is of FDR on the back of a train in Warm Springs, GA.  My dad didn't take those.  But we found a lot he did take.  We're fairly certain a couple of them are from the beginning of the race riots here in the South.  There's one that is possibly from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral.  We're trying to figure out what to do with them.  We're torn between wanting to keep them (but they're printed in a gigantic size and mounted and I'm not sure they are things I'd ever hang in my house) and we've discussed taking them to some sort of Atlanta historical society or something along those lines to see if we can donate a collection of his work.

Anyway, after we went through the attic and basement for yet another 5 hours, I met a friend of mine for dinner.  We both have massive amounts of drama going on in our lives so we had a drama filled dinner and I didn't get home until almost 11:00 Sunday night.  And then back to the grind Monday morning......

And in the middle of all of this, I also had someone staying in my guest room for two nights.

So I think I'm going to stop talking at y'all and go eat a couple of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups while I lounge on the sofa until I fall asleep with my cat on top of me and never make it upstairs to my bed.  Not that I've ever done that before...

I really can't believe all of this happened in a week

Okay.  Ima see if I can even remember what all has happened over the past week since I've been on here.

My mom was here for 9 days.  Her husband was here for 3 of them.  And they completely wore my butt out.  No, they didn't spank me.  They just kept me incredibly busy.

My mom got to my house on the Friday night before Thanksgiving.  On Saturday morning I was in the shower by 6:15, out the door by 7:30, had a mammogram at 8:00, met my mom and one of my aunts at 8:30, and drove them to the outlet malls up near South Carolina to meet another aunt for the day.  We got back home around 8:00 that night.  And then my mom and I stayed up until almost 1:00 a.m. playing cards.  After having that as my first day with her in town, I knew I was in trouble in the exhaustion department with a week to go.

We got cheap (but good) massages.  We went shopping in all of the stores she misses in Atlanta that she doesn't have in her town out in Texas.  We did grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. We went out to dinner almost every night.  We stayed up late playing cards every night.  We went through paperwork my brothers and I have gotten out of my dad's house that has my mom's personal info included, we went through boxes of pictures, we made some slight changes to decor in part of my house, and we did some laundry and cleaning (well, I did.....I didn't make my mom clean and do laundry).

And by the way, I was also working and doing all of this stuff around my job.  And I have major sleep issues and never sleep past about 3:30 every single morning. But I'm way too exhausted from never sleeping soundly to get up and blog in the middle of the night.

Wednesday night her husband flew in to town.  Thursday my mom, her husband, my older brother and I went to my fun neighbors' house for Thanksgiving dinner and stayed there most of the day.

Friday we did our family Thanksgiving because that worked better for some of our other family members' work schedules, split up family schedules, etc.  But before my mom and I could start prepping and cooking for hours and hours and hours, we had to go Lowe's to get a new deadbolt for my front door (yet another thing that broke in my house - for the second time), yard trash bags, and a bunch of flood lights because her husband was bored and wanted to work on stuff.  Which, YAY!

So now I have flood lights which light up my house as bright as though you are standing on the sun.  Y'all.  I'm not kidding.  You can probably see my house from outer space standing out more than any other house in the entire state of Georgia.  Unfortunately, the fixture that is right behind my bedroom windows has a malfunctioning motion detector so they just stay on all night.  All night.  Shine.  Shine.  Shine in my window.  And the one on the corner of the garage (also right behind my bedroom) has an overly sensitive motion detector and if a breeze blows and a limb or leaf on a tree 800 feet away moves the lights turn on.  And off.  On.  And off.  All night long.  But I am grateful because I'd rather have bright lights than the pitch black that I've had out there for the entire first year I've been in this house because remember?  I live in the 'hood.  And I have had two snakes in my driveway.  So I'll take the bright lights to hopefully scare off the thugs and so I don't step on a wiggly, bitey, poisonous snake.

After her husband replaced all of my flood lights and messed with them trying to get them to work properly and changed my deadbolt he said, "I really need another couple of weeks at your house to fix stuff."  Which?  Dude.  I know.  Daisy Jane's Dough Drain did not get that name because everything is in great shape up in here.

Anyway, my mom and her husband left Saturday morning to drive back to Texas (yes....they drove.  yes....it's a long trip) and I collapsed on my sofa from complete and utter exhaustion.

But only for a little while.  Then I decided that the massive amount of leaves in my yard and up and down my driveway really was getting ridiculous.  And I was afraid I'd step on a wiggly, bitey, poisonous snake that might be coiled up in a leaf pile.  That happened to my grandmother once.  She was about to step right down on a copperhead but thankfully saw it coiled up in the leaves at the last second.  So I blew leaves.  I raked leaves.  And when it was all said and done, there were 16 of those giant paper yard bags crammed as full as they could possibly be crammed full of leaves.  SIXTEEN bags of leaves.  I have a postage stamp sized lawn.  It's like an itty bitty baby yard.  It's 1/3 of an acre and my house, driveway and detached garage take up about 85% of it.  A few of y'all have seen it in person.  Can y'all imagine there being 16 bags of leaves in my teeny little yard?

Y'all, I don't even have a single big tree on my property.  I wish mother nature made leaves fall right under the tree they came from and never blow into another person's yard.  Because I have 4 tiny little trees and I would have had one bag at the most if that's how things worked.  I also dug up a small tree that was growing in a really undesirable place for a tree but the roots were already pretty major and that was not easy to dig up.  Within 15 minutes of quitting yard work, I could barely move and I knew I'd be in deep doo by the next day.

So I went ahead and pulled my Christmas tree out Saturday evening while I could kind of sort of still move.  And that's as far as I have gotten with decorating.  My tree is completely off kilter but after I messed with it for a while and my butt muscles and back muscles and hamstrings were getting more and more painful by the second, I gave up.  So maybe by next weekend I'll manage to get the tree to stand up straight and get some decorations on it.

By the time I went to bed Saturday night, I felt like someone had beat me to a bloody pulp.  Yard work ain't for sissies.  I almost cried I was hurting so horribly.

Sunday morning?  I did cry I hurt so much.  And I knew I had to go to my dad's house to meet my brother to move more stuff.  Which made me cry even harder.  I felt like I had done 12335496347634 squats while holding 94658436594 pounds.  Oh it was awful!  It hurt to lay down.  It hurt to stand up.  It hurt to sit.  It hurt to walk.  It is now Tuesday and my left butt cheek still trembles from pain off and on throughout the day.  You cannot find a more out of shape person than I am.  Yesterday I donated blood for a Red Cross blood drive in our office and I could barely get in and out of those lounge chairs they have you sit in.  It was humiliating!

Sunday at my dad's house was AWFUL.  Once this is all over I may tell y'all just how incredibly awful his wife has treated us.  But just as an example, she tried to take our grandmother's desk from us and when that didn't work because her kids protected it for us, just to be vengeful she went to my dad's bookshelves and took the only books I had said I wanted.  My dad had hundreds and hundreds of books and the ONLY books she took was the set I had expressed wanting.  She has shredded boxes and boxes of his papers from his entire life.  We have no idea what she has shredded.  It has been 4 months of complete hell dealing with her since my dad passed away.  As a reminder, she was only married to him for 2 years.  She has moved a good bit of her stuff out of the house and promised she would leave us a key so we could get in anytime we wanted.  We got there and she had not left a key.  Luckily, my brother had one on his keyring.  Then she showed up and said, "I didn't leave y'all a key.  How did you get in my house?"  MY HOUSE?  Her name was nowhere on any piece of paper having to do with that house. My brother told her he had a key and she said, "I don't remember giving you one."  And he told her it was the one he had when he used to live there because it's been our family home for almost 35 years.  Way before you came along, lady.  Then she followed us around to see what we were doing so we decided to go eat so that she would just leave.  Then we went back and packed up our cars with the stuff we came for.  Also, while we were there she hugged on us, kissed us, and kept telling us how much she loves us and that when she gets settled in her new place she wants us to come over for dinner.  Um.  No.  I've known a lot of two faced people in my life, but if I could tell y'all all of the stuff she's done, all of the stuff her kids have told us she's said about us,  and then have her acting all sweet and innocent and like she loves us, you would agree that she takes the cake in the two faced people department.  Because that's a real department right there.

Since I didn't get home until 9:00 Sunday night and then had to unload an entire SUV full of photography equipment that I have to take and have appraised (I think I had almost 45 cameras in my car) AND could barely move without screaming from the pain, I did not change the sheets and clean the bathroom after my mom left and before my renter came back last night.  But at least I had bright lights like the sun to unload my car.

That's why I didn't blog at y'all last night.  Because I had to work, then go to the grocery store, then come home, unload groceries, change sheets on a bed and clean a bathroom.  And girl, I was beat after this entire past week.

Before I made it to the grocery store, you'll never guess what I did.  I got on the elevator in the parking deck of my building and a City of Atlanta police officer got on too.  I then flung my arms and hands up in the air rather wildly and said loudly, "MAN!  YOU'RE GOING DOWN!"  This is something I would never advise any of you to do and say to an officer of the law.  He raised his eyebrows and said, "Um, excuse me m'am?"  And I yelled, "NO!  NO!  NOT YOU.  YOU'RE NOT GOING DOWN.  I AM NOT GOING TO MAKE YOU GO DOWN!  The elevator is going down.  But I need to go up.  I got on the wrong elevator is all."  And he mumbled something incoherently and moved as far away from me as he could get.

Oh my goodness.  I am exhausted.

BUT, BUT, BUT.....I also found out this past week that I seem to be cancer free!!!!!  The biopsy came back negative.  YIPPEE!  I have to have another ultrasound in a couple of months to follow-up and see what's going on at that point.

With all of this nonsense going on in my life, don't y'all think Hot Brazilian is going to be so glad to be back here living it with me soon?  Ha!  He's going to stampede back to Brazil within a week of getting off the plane.  He'd probably rather chase his meat source into a snake infested river than deal with the drama I have going on in my life currently.

Also, because I can't seem to post Music Monday results on a timely basis with the things I have going on right now, I think I'm going to put it on hold until after the holidays are over.  Because if y'all think my life is crazy now, you should see how it gets during the holidays - and we are still going to be dealing with my dad's house and his beyotch of a wife for at least another month or two.  I already know of 2 Christmas parties, a girls weekend out of town, two (and possibly three) house guests coming at different points during the month of December, and my mom and her husband are contemplating coming back for Christmas.  And Hot Brazilian is supposed to be here the week between Christmas and the New Year.  And oh yeah, I have not even made a list of what gifts I need to buy, much less actually gone out to buy them.  So yes, I think I'll put Music Monday on hold for a month and I will blog as often as I can.  It really stinks that I can't get on the internet at work. 

Y'all tell me some crazy stuff going on in your life right now so that I don't feel so alone.....

In which I give thanks for my lady bits.

Are y’all ready for my weekly excuse(s) as to why I haven’t written sooner?  How ridiculous am I? 

Honestly, I’ve kind of been feeling weird this past week and I wasn’t sure I wanted to say anything or not so I just kept my mouth shut.  And then my mom arrived from Texas and she’s not a fan of sharing anything on the internet so I couldn’t exactly explain that I needed to go share the stupidity of my life on a blog and not spend time with her.  She’ll be here until Saturday so don’t expect much blogging from me until this weekend either. 

But anyway, y’all want to hear about my lady bits?  Because that’s what made me feel all weird this week.  I mean, not physically.  My lady bits feel just fine.  But I’m not entirely sure that they are.  Fine I mean. 

I have fibroids so I have to have an ultrasound when I go for my yearly gross girly doctor visit.  And imagine my surprise the first time I had to have the ultrasound and assumed they would do it on the outside of my stomach as though I'm pregnant with child (I am not pregnant with child so please do not start any rumors) and then they held up a wand and told me exactly how they planned to do it.  “You’re going to do what?” That’s what I said when they told me.  And then they have you on the table with a monitor right above your head with the tech’s arm draped all across your leg and they tell you to let your legs fall open and “just relax” since that’s the most relaxing and not at all compromising position to be in, and I say all kinds of stupid things about the blobs that show up on the monitor because my mouth has no filter. 

But anyway, I went for my ultrasound and yearly gross girl doctor visit this past Tuesday morning.  And after the ultrasound was done and the nurse was taking my blood pressure and I had to wee in a cup while trying not to wee all over my hand, and I was refusing to be weighed (seriously, I tell them each year I don’t want to be weighed and they don’t do it.  I was shocked it worked the first time and I never plan to be weighed again because I do not want to be prescribed depression meds by my gyno), the nurse casually says, “your temperature is fine, your blood pressure is perfect and oh by the way, the doctor wants to do an endometrial biopsy while you’re already in here if that’s okay.”  And I said, “is this because I refused to be weighed?  Because you can totally weigh me and tell me how bad I need to lose weight in lieu of saying I need a biopsy.  I actually ALREADY KNOW that I’m fat in case you’re wondering.  I just don’t want to know exactly how fat I am is all.” 

It turns out some stuff showed up on the ultrasound and in combination with me having one of the worst cycles of my life a couple of weeks ago, they want to see what’s going on and make sure I have no abnormal cells growing and stuff. 

Have any of you had an endometrial biopsy?  I can now add something else to my List of Extremely Unpleasant Things I Never Want to Repeat.  (It contains things such as almost drowning as a toddler and being saved by my older brother, divorce, sitting through a Tom Cruise movie, finding a snake in my driveway (twice in the past 6 months), tripping on a flip flop and breaking my humerus in 4 places and wearing a body brace for a long time, dying my hair the wrong color, living in a house during a construction project, having my boyfriend living out of the country for a very long time, dealing with an obnoxious and mean spouse after the death of one of my parents, stepping in dog poop in my yard and not realizing it until I got to work and the stench started making my eyes and my co-workers’ eyes water, having the elastic in my slip break and it falling down to my ankles while at work in a meeting with a client (yes….true story), telling a room full of people kind of loudly (twice because they said “WHAT?!" after the first time I said it) that my boss was grabbing his package,  losing one shoe at a college football game BECAUSE IT FELL INTO THE HEDGES on the sideline of the University of Georgia football field and having to walk across campus to my dorm with one shoe on, and accidentally squirting dark brown paint all down the leg of a customer’s pants when I was teaching a painting class and then helping her wash them in the bathroom sink and have her sit in my class WITH NO PANTS ON with 60 people.)  Anyway, this whole biopsy business has freaked me out.  Because have I told y’all about my family’s cancer history?  It’s rich.  Rich with cancer.  My biological mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 26 and died when she was 28 (I was 5).  My dad had prostate cancer.  My younger brother had testicular cancer.  My older brother has had pre-cancerous skin things removed.  Two aunts (one of each side of my family) have had breast cancer and one died from it.  My cousin had breast cancer.  Another cousin had lung cancer even though she’s never smoked.  My grandfather died of a brain tumor.  My grandmother had stomach cancer and colon cancer.  Do y’all want me to keep going?  So they keep a close watch on me.  Especially because I’ve gone through multiple cyst aspirations and have had fibroids for a few years.  And now I’ve been keeping a close watch on my phone waiting for the call with the pathology results.  I should know something today or tomorrow.  Just in time for Thanksgiving.  Hopefully I will be giving thanks for the results. 

Then I went for my mammogram at 8:00 on Saturday morning because I can think of no better way to start my weekend than getting up at 6:30 and leaving my house by 7:30 for a fun mammogram.  The rest of the weekend was good though.  But anyway, y’all please keep me in your thoughts.  Yes.  I’m asking y’all to think good thoughts about my lady bits because that is how I roll. 

Let’s move on to Music Monday. 

Next time I will post results for last week AND this week because I’m trying to type this post in stealth mode at work by typing it in Word to look like I’m working on a document and then I’m going to quickly cut and paste it into my blog while I'm at the office since my mom is staying at my house and I can’t do it there, and I cannot pull up You Tube videos with people walking behind my desk every 45 seconds.  My life is stupid. 

This week’s theme is lady bits!  Just kidding.  This week’s theme is this:  the title(s) of the song(s) you submit must contain something you’re thankful for - whether your thankful for stuff like kittens, food, love, flowers, or you’re not like me at all and you’re more into giving thanks for chores (Laundry Room by The Avett Brothers), crime (I Shot the Sheriff), or bad weather (Riders on the Storm).  And give us a little explanation if you feel like it (and especially if it needs some explanation.  If you’re thankful for laundry, that will need some explaining in my opinion.)  I just want to know what all of you are thankful for. 

I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I’m thankful for the friendships I’ve made with all of you!

Love and Marriage. And camouflage. Lots and lots of camouflage.

Remember when I told y’all a few weeks ago that I was taking a trip soon?  Remember when I said I was going somewhere y’all have probably never heard of and would probably never go on vacation in a bazillion years?

I went.

This weekend was my sweet little cousin’s wedding.  In Morton, Mississippi.  See?  Has anyone heard of it?  Y’all don’t want to go there do you?  No, I can assure you that you don’t.

Want to know what other little towns I spent time in while I was there?  Forest, MS.  Cooperville, MS.  Puckett, MS.  Canton, MS (yes, that’s where A Time to Kill was filmed and my aunt worked at the post office back then and got to meet all of the movie stars so maybe Canton, MS is actually more exciting than Atlanta).  And we did make it to Jackson, MS yesterday morning for breakfast before we left.  But we went to Cracker Barrel so we may as well have been in Forest or Cooperville or Puckett again with the countryness of it all.

My aunt by marriage (the bride’s mom) has a sister and two brothers.  One of the brothers has a barbecue restaurant so we went there for dinner Friday night.  Y’all.  That was some awesome barbecue.  Then we decided to go out for coffee.  There is no Starbucks in Morton, MS.  Or any other coffee place for that matter.  But there is a McDonalds (and they only got a McDonalds about 2 or 3 years ago) so that’s where we hung out. 

Between the barbecue restaurant and the only McDonalds around for many, many miles, I am fairly certain I saw more camouflage on Friday night than I’ve ever seen in my life.  There were entire families covered in it.  Girls on dates.  Babies.  Everyone wore camouflage.  Except us.  I kind of wanted to go buy myself some camouflage coveralls so I would fit in better than I did in my jeans and grape colored sweater.  Also, every female between the ages of 13 and 40 in Morton, MS has the exact same hairstyle.  It is so weird.  And my aunt was telling hilarious stories about my cousin’s new puppy and how it is eating everything in their house and she said it ate the electrical cord off of “one of the six hair styling tools” in my cousin’s bedroom so apparently the women of Morton, MS spend the majority of their time all making their hair look identical if it takes that many tools to do it.  And they probably do that because there is very little else to do in Morton.

Guess what happened when I was there though?  There was something going on with some major police activity.  They had police at every stop sign.  The police were stopping people on the expressway, diverting them off the highway and then back on.  I guess they were searching for someone.  I brought the criminal element from Atlanta with me it seems.

And guess what happened when I got back to Atlanta last night?  I got off at my exit and I was right behind an Atlanta Police Department Crime Investigation unit.  It turned down my street.  But then it turned off at the street 4 houses away from me and thank goodness for that.  I only like my ‘hood crime when it’s a few houses away.

This morning the fire department and ambulances were at the house across the street from me while I was eating breakfast and the police had a car pulled over in front of my house when I was leaving for work.  There is always something going on in my ‘hood.  There is a fairly young girl (late teens/early 20’s maybe) who lives across the street from me and she is very sickly and the fire department and ambulances are there a lot to take her to the hospital.  I haven’t seen them pick her up in several months so I honestly was afraid she had passed away because they are normally there about once every month or two.  Maybe it’s just been happening while I’ve been at work or out somewhere though.  Anyway, I was glad to see she’s still alive even though she headed back to the hospital this morning.

But anyway, the wedding was super sweet.  Her bridesmaids wore my favorite color (peacock blue) and their dresses were a little above the knee and they all wore cowboy boots.  The bride wore cowboy boots with her wedding dress too.  The reception was at the lodge in the state park where we have our family reunion every summer but they fixed up the lodge quite a bit and it was just one of the sweetest and simplest weddings I’ve been to in a while.  It was beautiful.  And now they are on a cruise for a week. 

On the way home, I passed by an exit for Eutaw, AL.  I was thinking maybe they thought that’s how “Utah” is spelled and named it after Utah.  Thank goodness I didn’t go offend someone asking them that because I Googled it and it’s named after some Revolutionary War battle somewhere in the Carolinas.

When I got home last night I saw that Hot Brazilian had tried to call me a bunch over the weekend and sent me sad, frowning faces because I wasn’t around to talk to him on Skype.  I told him last week that I would be out of town this weekend.  Can he not remember that while he’s busy trying to stay alive, chasing animals into snake infested rivers for dinner, helping the poverty stricken children of the Amazon, and in general being a giant badass fighting corruption so he can change people’s lives?  Geez.  Can’t he do it all?  (Y’all do know I’m kidding, right?  Because he is totally doing all of those things.  That’s part of what makes him so freaking hot.)

Now I will spend this week working by day and getting my house ready by night because my mom is coming this Thursday to stay for about a week and a half.  Also I will be grocery shopping because I have nothing to feed my mom.  I hate grocery shopping. It ranks right up there with cleaning toilets in my world, and if there is one thing I despise doing it’s cleaning a toilet.

The college student that is renting my guest room sometimes one night a week and sometimes several nights a week is here through Wednesday.  So I can’t change sheets and clean the guest bathroom until the night before my mom is coming.  And then the college student might be here one night next week.  If so, I will have to kick my mom out of the guest room since the college student has already paid me for the month, change the sheets (again) and clean the bathroom (again) before the college student comes, my mom will have to share my bed with me and the gross stain Bailey left on my comforter while she was exploding everywhere last week because quite frankly I am too broke right now to be buying a new comforter, and then after the college student is gone I get to change the sheets (again), clean the guest bathroom (again), and put my mom back in the guest room so she can have that room when her husband flies in the night before Thanksgiving.  Because I’m absolutely not sharing my bed with both of them.  (Ewwww!)  I have a 5 bedroom house but only two beds so I have to go through this ridiculousness a lot.  Because I’ve had nothing but house guests for the past year.  Have I told y’all that already?  I feel like I have.  The longest I’ve gone in the past year without a house guest is a little less than 3 weeks.  So please do not ask me to come stay at my house anytime soon. 

I think the college student will be gone at the end of November and then Hot Brazilian is supposed to be here the last week of December.  I was hoping I might get a whole month without a house guest before HB got back.  But when I talked to Hot Brazilian last week he told me one of his daughters has been saving her money to come visit the U.S. for 10-15 days and you know what I did, don’t you?  I offered my house for her to stay.  She’s trying to come in early December instead of waiting until her dad comes back.  No, I’m not sure why.  However, I’m not sure that’s going to happen because he is uncomfortable with her jumping on the train and sightseeing around Atlanta by herself since she’s only in her late teens and has never been to the U.S. before and I have to, you know, work.  I told him I might be able to take a day or two off but not two weeks.  When I asked him what she would do all day stuck in my house if he wouldn’t allow her to go downtown alone, he said she likes to read.  I told him a teenaged girl who has worked and saved her money to travel to another country does not want to sit in an old lady’s house and read while the old lady is at work.

My life can be exhausting sometimes.  As I’m sure all of yours are too.

Let’s move on to Music Monday.

In honor of my cousin and my trip to one of the most countrified places I’ve ever been, this week’s theme is:  Gettin’ hitched!  The song(s) you submit must contain a word in the title relating to weddings/getting married (wedding, marriage, dress, veil, flowers, honeymoon, ball and chain, etc.).  I’m going to say “love” is not good because there are way too many songs with “love” in the title and I want this to be a bit more challenging than that.

As usual, I have a few songs in mind but can’t wait to see what y’all submit!

I got smarter this week.

Things I have learned this week:

*  The best way to vote in my polling place is to work late, stampede to the school I have to vote in completely in a panic that you are not going to make it there in time, and you will not have to wait in line for even a minute. 

*  I have some far right, over-the-top conservative friends in life.  And some of them are super sore losers on Facebook.  And apparently any of us who voted for Obama do not care about children, we have "rabid cravings for free stuff free of any responsibility," have our "heads up our asses", we have an "absurd amount of ignorance," and we are "self absorbed greedy thieves."  Today he says he hopes Texas secedes from the US and that it would be the ultimate irony if all of the southern states secede to escape slavery.  And that's just what ONE friend said..... By the way, he also claims to be a Christian and talks about going to church all the time.  Aren't Christians supposed to be non-judgmental?  And do people on either side think that such mean comments will ever convince someone on the other side to think about changing their mind about things?

* With my new temporary desk at work, I cannot get on the internet for anything that isn't work related because I'm directly in the path between the lobby on our floor and the office of one of our big wig partners who is on the management committee.  He walks by my desk a lot.  And one of my bosses is in an office approximately 2 feet from my desk and my back is to him so I never hear or see anyone coming.  So no internet for me.  And I have learned just how productive I can actually be when I'm working the entire time I'm at work.  There is another girl on the other end of my floor who apparently just doesn't care, because one of my friends told me she sits in her cubicle and plays computer games a good part of the day. 

*  My car seems to have some electrical issues.  A couple of years ago, every single time I turned to the right the 'door open' chime would go off and my dome light would come on.  And if you want to know something that got to be incredibly annoying, it was that.  I finally got that fixed after 2 times in the shop.  About a month ago, I had to have every brake light bulb changed except one - my driver's side main brake light was out and all 6 of the little bulbs in the middle light were out.  Last week my battery died.  When I took it in, the passenger's side brake light was out.  Last night a headlight went out.  I've now spent almost $150 getting lights replaced in less than 2 months (and don't even suggest I do it myself.  I tried that once.  Once.  Never again.)  Oy.

*  Trying to download stuff from my Amazon Cloud Drive to my mp3 player is enough to put me in the funny farm.  I kept downloading and downloading and synching to my mp3 player and it would not show up on it.  And then suddenly this one album did show up.  Three times.  I like The Lumineers, but not that much.

* And finally I learned this:  y'all know yourselves some meat songs.

Here are my submissions:


 And crap.....my computer is only playing about 3 seconds of each song on You Tube if it will play anything at all.  So I'm not going to link to videos for the Music Monday results this week.  You'll have to look them up.  Sorry!  Don't know what's going on......

My submissions:  Tom Waits - Eggs and Sausage, The Smiths - Meat is Murder, and Taj Mahal - Bacon Fat.

First Place goes to Tee for The Chicken Song!  Come on, you know you can't hear that song without wanting to dance!!

Second Place goes to Lisa Pie for Jimmy Buffet's Cheeseburger in Paradise.

And Third Place goes to Scraps for Meatloaf's In the Land of the Pigs, The Butcher is King.

Hey Just Paula, are you okay up there?  Y'all have been beaten up by Mother Nature but I hope you and your family are making it through this okay.  I saw on Facebook that it took you 3 hours to get home yesterday?  OMG.  Did you have to work today?  Let me know if there's anything we can do for you!!