Well, Jamie came home from work a while ago, super-excited about what he discovered laying on top of a dumpster today. He asked me if I wanted to see it. I said of course. He told me he had it in the little cooler he takes to work with him every day. So he opened the lid of the cooler, put his hand in, and from inside the cooler, came a loud HONK! So of course, I said WTH, and then he whipped out this:
A freakin' bicycle horn. I HATE those damn things! Then he proceeded to loudly and obnoxiously honk the HELL out of it all over the place. I was NOT amused:
And then I made him stop honking it. Jamie said we can use it to attract the geese down at the lake. Yeah, right. And if he honks it much more, I'm gonna attract my foot right up his rear end. Stupid horn! I can't wait 'til it tears up so I can send it BACK to the dumpster, where it belongs! LOL! ;)
Well, today we noticed that the lake is finally up just high enough for us to start going paddleboating. And our maiden voyage of the year turned out to be EPIC.
What was intended to be a short, relaxing little paddleboat ride was completely blown out of the water (no pun intended) when at the last minute, I got the bright idea to bring our two dogs along for the ride (which is something we've never tried before).
Today was pretty awesome. We spent most of the day at the park admiring the wildlife. The best part was that Steve the Squirrel Man was there (as usual), and he showed us how to hand-feed the birds and squirrels! I felt just like Snow White!
The birds went so fast, that I was only able to barely get one quick photo of a chickadee eating a peanut out of Jamie's hand. I had a bird called a titmouse (I know, tee-hee) eat out of my hand twice. Now I think we're hopelessly addicted to hand-feeding the critters at the park, so it looks like we'll be doing a lot of that this summer! In addition to the squirrels and birds, we also saw quite a few non-venomous water snakes (even three of them curled up all together in a pile), a female duck who unfortunately had a slightly injured neck (she's apparently the only female duck in the whole park, so she probably got a little too much 'male-duck' attention, if you know what I mean)... O__o We also saw a female Canada goose on her nest, the male Canada goose stationed cautiously nearby, several big carp swimming in the creek, and a couple of blue-tail lizards. All in all, a pretty good day! :)
So, without further ado, here's The Wild World of Deana - National Geographic Slideshow/Video Extravaganza...!
Enjoy!
The very best parts are: The duck startling the snake (at the 05:30 mark), Lilly hand-feeding and petting a squirrel (at the 10:15 mark), and Steve the Squirrel Man hand-feeding a bird (at the 12:33 mark). (you know, just in case you're in a hurry...!) ;)
I had slept in Lilly's bed with her last night, and we woke up a while ago. Our cat, Domino was snuggled in between us and purring, so we laid there for a while before we got up, petting the cat. While I was playing with the cat's tail, I told Lilly, "When I was a little girl, I used to think that a cat's tail had a brain in the tip of it, so it had a mind of its own. And that's why the cat's tail would move around all funny...I thought the tail was kind of like a giant caterpillar". So then Lilly says, "When I was a little girl," (ha ha, she's only 8) "I thought that the poop came out of the tip of the kitty's tail". I laughed so hard, it caused the bedside lamp to turn on (we have The Clapper). LOL!!!
LOL...Lilly was watching a show on YouTube just now. Lilly said to me, "Hey, this girl's mom is from Athens, Greece. Is that the place with the roman numerals, where they have triangles in the alphabet? LOL!!!
Well, I took my weekly trip to the grocery store earlier this afternoon. As I was walking towards the entrance of the store, I saw a couple of older men set up just outside the door with a table and signs, taking donations for White Cane Day -- whatever that is. (I looked it up, and apparently it's the Lions Club, collecting money for sight care). Anyway, when I saw the men, I secretly said "crap" to myself under my breath. Now, don't get me wrong. It's great for people to collect money for a good cause. It just sucks to feel pressured and/or guilted into giving something. Especially in this rotten economy when not many people have a whole lot of extra cash to be flinging into someone's donation bucket. And I know they probably appreciate every little bit of money they get, but it feels crappy to only plink a small handful of pocket change (mostly pennies) into someone's bucket. And then they force their silly little 'thank-you gift' on you, which consists of a white cane that looks like a bent lollipop stick with a red tip, which you throw away moments later. Ehh. As I approached the men, I tried really hard not to make eye contact and hurry past them. I was too freaked out to remember the 'just pretend you're talking on your cell phone' schtick. And just when I thought I was going to make it past the men without a hassle, one of the men (who looked kinda creepy) pipes up and says to me something to the effect of "Ma'am? Would you make a donation"? And I replied "I'll get you on the way back out". Then the man said (in a semi-creepy tone of voice) "OK; we'll be lookin' for ya". (I'm not able to just say "no", because it makes me feel like a terd). But just the way the man said it kind of made me a little mad, and he wasn't kidding. I almost felt like a character from some old cartoon, being held upside-down by my ankles and shaken so that loose change falls out of my pockets. So I made my way into the store, grabbed a buggy, and said "crap" to myself again. As I wrapped up my shopping trip, standing and waiting in the checkout line, I realized that I would have to walk back out of the store past those two men and give them a stupid donation. I always pay for my groceries with my debit card. I had a little tiny bit of pocket change, but the smallest "paper money" I had was a $5 bill. I didn't really want to give them five whole dollars, and I didn't want to fool with changing my $5 bill for five $1 bills with the grocery cashier, just so I could make a stupid donation that I didn't really want to do. About that time, I thought to myself, "crap, if there was only another exit...WAITAMINIT...THERE ISANOTHER EXIT"! Then I remembered that I'd been in those situations before, where I thought I was cleverly avoiding donation-takers by using a different exit, only to discover with much disdain that additional donation-takers were positioned at the other door as well (in which case I reluctantly chunked some money into their bucket, and grudgingly went on my way). I decided that if that was the case today, then it meant that I was simply destined to give them my $5, and I should just cough it up, and carry on. So after my grocery transaction was complete, I gleefully pushed my buggy full of groceries all the way down to the other end of the store to make my escape out of the other exit. Right before I went out the door, I paused slightly to look outside, and *yesss* the coast was clear. So I busted out of the store, briskly pushing my cart, and maneuvered my way all the way over to the other side of the parking lot where my car was parked, avoiding the donation-takers like the plague. Heh heh heh heh heh. I was like:
I was also extra careful to be sure that I didn't attract their attention; I didn't want them to notice my escape. Not that they would have chased me down the parking lot waving their little white-cane-'thank-you' gifts, and shouting angrily "HEY, WAIT, YOU PROMISED YOU'D COME BACK" or anything like that, but I just didn't want to deal with it. Especially after that one man was kind of a jerk with the whole sketchy 'we'll-be-watching-for-you-to-come-back-out, and-then-we'll-GITCHA' schtick. Uhh! So my donation-taker avoidance scheme went off without a hitch, and I was glad. And not to seem like a complete butthole, I have made many donations (both monetarily, and in the form of goods) in the past to local things that were more near and dear to my heart, such as Books for Babies, the High School Band, the Humane Society, and the county Food Bank, just to name a few. I just have an easier time putting money in an unmanned 'tip jar' at cash registers, or placing cat/dog food in the humane society donations box, or anonymously and clandestinely late at night dropping off really nice items for the humane society to sell in their thrift shop. Just don't shake me down for a donation! Bleh! :P I mean, I understand that if you don't ask, sometimes you don't get, but sheesh!
Well, it all started at 7:00 this morning when I was awakened to the sound of Lilly puking. I had thought Lilly was in my bathroom, but no, she was literally just 3 feet away from the bathroom, puking on the bedroom carpet. What is it with kids and pets anyway -- it's like they purposefully seek out carpet to puke on. The only carpet we have in the whole entire house is in the two bedrooms; the bathroom floors are vinyl, and the rest of the house has hardwood flooring, but nooooo, the carpet always gets puked on! UHH! >:{ And after the puke session, then came the sharts. Again! Lilly sharted a total of 4 times. That's 4 changes of undies & pants in rapid succession. At that point, I realized that I owed Hamburger Helper a small apology, since Lilly's sickness was obviously caused by some sort of virus, and not due to her ingestion of a small portion of Hamburger Helper Philly Cheesesteak for supper the other night. *I stand corrected*. Sorry, Helping Hand. My bad.
Although I am 100% certain that my own near-shart experience, and Jamie's super-shart under the streetlight at 4:00 AM earlier this week were without a doubt a direct result of the Hamburger Helper. So I'm not issuing a full apology. >:/
At first, it looked to me like Lilly would be out of commission for the day, which sucked, since we had a lot of fun stuff planned. But, thank goodness for the magical, mystical, sudden healing power of kids, because after she laid on the couch under a blanket, watched a few cartoons, and had a little breakfast, she was good to go.
First on our agenda of fun for the day was going to watch Lilly's cousin Claire in her very first pageant! Claire was so adorable (as always)!
(lousy, grainy, zoomed-in picture, but you get the idea...Claire's a little ANGEL)! :)
Next on our agenda of fun was going to the fair in town.
(Lilly wasn't in the mood to pose for pictures, so I had to sneak and take 'em without her realizing it, heh heh).
First was the mini-petting zoo.
The pregnant horse (she was so sweet, and her nose felt like velvet):
Two cute li'l ponies (they had soft noses too):
A sweet donkey (softer than expected):
Some young li'l chickens (couldn't really touch them):
A cute, oinky pig (Lilly touched its nose and reported that it was actually kind of hard. Hmm, who knew?) I petted its back too, and its hairs were super-bristly! Then I got to craving bacon and had to stop. O__o LOL!
*SHUN*-goats
And here's a GREAT picture of an ass!:
...and the donkey's cute, too! LOL! Just kidding...! ;)
Then Lilly wallered around inside a giant inflatable ball in a pool of water for a few minutes:
And onward to the rides:
Then Lilly discovered some friends from school to ride rides with:
One of Lilly's favorite things to ride today was the slide:
I remember when I was around Lilly's age and had gone to a fair. They had one of those big slides like this, and I got to the top of the thing with my burlap sack, looked down, freaked out, and had to embarrassingly abort the mission because I chickened out. I had to do the Walk of Shame all the way back down the rickety stairs, forlornly clutching my unused burlap sack. I never did muster up the courage to ride one of those slides. :( I guess I'm just too afraid of heights. That, and going a thousand miles an hour whilst seated precariously upon a tater sack with no brakes whatsoever might have a little something to do with it. :/ If memory serves, back in those days, the people sliding down seemed to go a LOT faster. And the slide was METAL. And I think the carnies secretly greased it. Ahh, yes, the good ol' days before party-poopin' safety regulations... *sigh* Even though I was never brave enough to personally conquer The Slide, I sure did enjoy watching everyone else do it! :) I always have been a little bit more of a spectator than a participator!
Last year was the first year that Lilly began to get turned away from the "baby" rides, due to her being so tall. This year, being even taller, she decided she wanted to graduate to the "big kid" rides. After all, you can only ride the merry-go-round and teacups so many times before it gets a little bit boring.
So we let Lilly ride the Thing That Makes You Go Up And Down In Circles. I think it was called the Factory, or X-Factory, or something nutty like that. It had painted pictures of comic book characters all around behind it (what the Incredible Hulk has to do with the act of going round and around in circles, I'll never figure out). But Lilly had a blast riding it, nonetheless. It was her first *big kid* ride, and she ended up riding it twice. Here is a video of her second trip on the ride. My stupid camera battery died near the end of the ride and cut the video off abruptly, but you get to see most of it anyway. (That girl's got some LUNGS)! :O
Just like always, it was almost impossible to get Lilly to leave the fair. It was a little after 8:00 this evening when we finally headed back home. A little while before we left, one of my friends from my old workplace gave Lilly some cotton candy, so that made Lilly's day. I just hope that it doesn't get colorfully puked up on the bedroom carpet in the morning! ;)
This post may be TMI for some people, but I consider it to be a public service announcement. ;) A few nights ago, we had a quick supper of Hamburger Helper. The next day, as I was fiddling around the house, I came thisclose to sharting. Hours later, when Jamie came home from work, he announced to me that he had sharted severely early that morning. He had just emptied a dumpster. Then the shart occurred. Once he realized his mistake, he grabbed a paper towel from the cab of his garbage truck, stood under a lone streetlight all out in the open (nobody's around at 4:00 AM to see anyway), and cleaned himself up the best he could. Then he flung the poopy-towel into the dumpster that he had just emptied. O__o This afternoon, when I picked Lilly up at the school bus stop, she looked at me very seriously, and said sternly "Mom, guess what......look", and began pulling down her pants in the car. Alarmed, I had no idea exactly what she was about to reveal to me. Then she turned around with her 'full moon' pointed in my direction, and I saw it in the undies. Super-Severe Shart at 12:00 (no, seriously, it really did happen at lunchtime...LOL)! What a milestone...Lilly's first shart! Then Lilly went on to explain to me that after it happened, and she realized her mistake (her shart was so epic that you could actually see it through the pair of shorts she was wearing), she tied her jacket around her waist and ended up waltzing around like that for the rest of the day. (Thank God for that jacket)! I asked Lilly if anybody had seen the shart-stain, or knew that she had sharted (or if anyone mentioned that they smelled something bad whenever they got near her), but luckily they were none the wiser. WHEW! Shart secret concealed! After I got done laughing about everybody's shart mishaps, It finally dawned on me, and I put 2 and 2 together.
So no more Hamburger Helper for us. :/
"Hey, Helping Hand"?
"Yeah"?
"How's about grabbin' a paper towel & bringing it to me in the bathroom...I've got something else you can Help me with..."
I was in the process of making Lilly brush her teeth and wash her face before getting ready for bed a few minutes ago. Lilly brushed her teeth, and I grabbed a clean washcloth from the linen closet and flopped it down next to her on the bathroom sink for her to use. She wet the rag with water, and commenced to rubbing her face with it. Suddenly, she grimaced and slung the rag down, claiming that it stunk. I told her that it was fresh and clean; that there was no way it could smell bad. And Lilly said "Well, it smells bad to MY smell buds"! LOL!
Well, yesterday's lake adventure was pretty uneventful UNTIL a sort-of-cute dog showed up, followed by a mean dog, followed by a SUPER-mean dog, followed by a creepy ol' man who was looking for someone to murder going fishing. Me and Lilly were by ourselves in the edge of the weeds picking up metal cans to recycle, and the next thing we know, the sort-of-cute dog appeared out of nowhere. It didn't come right up to us; it just kept running back up the road for a few seconds, and then running back down to look at me and Lilly. A little bit later, we heard dogs barking and running our way. Then the mean and SUPER-mean dogs spotted us. The SUPER-mean dog was like this:
barking its @$$ off as hard as it could at us. I must admit that I was secretly a little bit worried, and Lilly was kind of scared. I told Lilly that we should just ignore the dog. About that time, we heard a man yelling for his dog. He was calling, "Frisky......Frisky......Frisky, come here"! And then the sketchy ol' man came walking down from the direction that the dogs had come. He saw that his dogs had us "treed", and he was sort of hollering at them to quit, but I never could really hear exactly what he was saying because all three of the dogs were barking so hard at us all at the same time. The funny thing was that when I had heard the man yelling for his dog "Frisky", I was picturing 'Frisky' to be some silly little cute dog like this:
But no; 'Frisky' was this:
'Frisky', indeed.
O__o
I think it needs to be re-named MURDERER. It must be one of those silly joke opposite names, like having a dog like this and naming it 'Tiny':
Or having a dog like this and naming it 'Bruiser'.
The sketchy ol' man didn't act like he was too concerned that his stupid mean dogs were acting like they were about to eat our faces off if we made a wrong move. Me and Lilly just stood still. Finally the three dogs followed their sketchy man (he was carrying a fishing pole, headed down to the edge of the lake to go fishing). So me and Lilly were able to start easing our way up the road to the highway. We weren't about to go walking back home our usual way through the woods, since that would mean that we would have to pass by the sketchy man and his three dogs, and get them all stirred up and after us again. The meanest dog, 'Frisky', detected that me and Lilly were starting to slowly make our way up the road, and came back to bark viciously at us some more. Finally I understood part of what the sketchy man was yelling; he was telling me to throw a rock at it. So I did, and said "sorry", 'Frisky' retreated, and me and Lilly were able to make our escape. I'd rather take my chances walking the short distance home on the highway (and risk getting hit by a car) than to run the risk of being eaten alive by three stupid mean dogs or kidnapped and/or murdered by a creepy fisherman anyday! :/
After we narrowly escaped being eaten alive by 'Frisky' (the pitbull?), we ate some supper, and went back down to the lake again ('Frisky' & Gang had thankfully gone back home), and this time, me and Lilly brought Jamie along with us just in case.
Lilly had hornswaggled us to go swimming again, even though it's nowhere near time to go swimming yet. So here are a couple of pictures of Lilly's freezing cold swimming session.
I like to call this one the "OMG IT'S COLD"!:
And here's pretty much the extent of Lilly's swimming adventure (no real swimming being done; really just messing around in the very shallow water):
While we were letting Lilly "swim", me and Jamie noticed that there were a total of seven fairly large-sized holes that we could see, that had been dug out into the side of the bank. The holes had obviously been dug by some kind of critter. Here's a picture of a couple of the holes that were side-by-side:
And here's a closeup picture of one of the holes:
At first, Jamie thought that a bear had dug the holes, but just above the particular hole pictured above, you can see the little sharp claw marks. So it must have been a little critter like a raccoon or groundhog or something that dug all those holes.
Here's a closeup picture of the claw marks:
I don't know what the critter was digging for; obviously probably some kind of food. Worms? Grubs? Roots? I wish I knew. It must have been good, and the critter must've had success in finding what it was looking for, for it to keep digging and digging all those big deep holes. Interesting.
Anyway, it started getting late and dark, so we reluctantly had to head back home. On the way, I noticed that the frogs were hollering in full force, so I decided to take a short video of it to capture the sound of it. At the end of the video, I tried to zoom in on Jamie and Lilly, but my stupid camera wouldn't zoom. Oh, well, at least you can still hear the frogs.
You have no idea how glad I am that Spring has finally SPRUNG! :D
OOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!! I am so traumatized right now. I can barely type. It's like a nightmare that came to life. Jamie came home from work a while ago, and we were out on the porch together. He gave me a little hug, and as I stepped back, I just happened to notice a few little specks of stuff on the shoulder of his t-shirt. So as I began to tell him that he had some stuff on his shirt, and lifted my hand to start brushing the stuff off, he turned, and that's when we discovered that THE ENTIRE BACK OF HIS SHIRT WAS COMPLETELY COVERED IN TINY BABY SPIDERS. COMPLETELYFREAKINGCOVERED.
Luckily, Jamie's not scared of spiders, or really anything else for that matter, (I wasn't scared; I just had a sudden, severe case of the willies, that's all), and as I was freaking out and yelling, I helped him slide the shirt off, so as not to get the spiders all over him. There must have been around 50 of the little boogers. It was HORRIBLE!!! Definitely Grade 'A' Nightmare Fuel!!! So I got my wits about me enough to grab my camera. Here's a couple of pictures:
*SHUDDERRRRRRRRRRR* And then Jamie shook all the baby spiders off of the shirt and into the flowerbed. We don't really know how it happened. We don't know exactly where they came from for sure. All I know is that it really creeped me the heck out, and just the thought of it is still making me itch all over. Eeeww! Luckily, I was just about to wash a load of whites anyway, so this shirt is about to get a good dose of bleach, if for nothing else than my own peace of mind. Blecch! HELLO, SPRING...and let the freaky bug infestations BEGIN!
Oh dear. We were driving in the car on the way to Lilly's gymnastics class earlier this evening, and Lilly was in the back seat reading a book. It was a nice little book aimed toward girls a little older than Lilly, giving them helpful hints and tricks on how to deal with tricky or embarrassing situations. I realized this as soon as Lilly asked this question from the back seat: "Mom...what's a tampin"? After I thought about it for 3 seconds, it dawned on me. "Tampin" = Tampon. Oh dear! So after I gently corrected her to tell her how the word was actually pronounced, she wanted to know what it was. Seeing as how we were almost at gymnastics, and I didn't have time to explain things very well, Lilly piped up and said "oh, is it one of those things for your --" and I interjected "YES...I'll tell you about it later...I've been meaning to tell you about that kind of thing anyway". Daddy, in the meantime, was sitting in the passenger's seat next to me, just grinning and shaking his head. :/
Well, pull yourself up a chair, grab a snack, and prepare to view a painfully long, but painfully cute, video of 4 sweet little 1-week old kittens (and their excellent mommy)! Enjoy! :)
