First of all, I didn't think that anything had happened lately that was really worth reporting. I guess more people are interested in what boring ol' me is up to than I realized (hi again, Dad)! :) Second of all, since we've been stuck at home during summer break off from school, Lilly has gotten us into the horrible habit of staying up all night long and sleeping all day. (Lilly sleeps in my bed with me, and Jamie usually sleeps in Lilly's bed, because we only have 2 bedrooms, and nobody can stand to sleep in the same room as Jamie because he makes the most God-awful rackets in his sleep). He doesn't snore, but he does the worst, loudest, most annoying heavy breathing/wheezing/clicking/whistling you have ever heard in your life. It's so terrible that sometimes I can still hear it all the way in another room, even with the door shut. So anyway, the point is, since me and Lilly are forced to bunk together, that means that I am basically held hostage, so if Lilly is bouncing off the walls (and she almost always is), then I'm not able to get any sleep. If we had one more bedroom (so that each of us could have our own place to sleep), it would be fine; but since we were stupid when we built our house, we only have two bedrooms. Sometimes Jamie will sleep on the couch in the living room so that I can have my bed all to myself and Lilly can be in her own bed, and he never complains about it, but face it, sleeping on the couch sucks. Even I tried sleeping on the couch the other night, just to try to get some relief, but it didn't work. At around 5:00 in the morning, Lilly (who had never even went to sleep) came into the living room after me to tell me she missed me, and begged me to come back to the bed with her so we could snuggle. So off we went, finally went to sleep, and as usual, probably didn't wake up 'til around 2:00 in the afternoon. :P
So anyway, we're all messed up.
Last night while I was trying to get to sleep (probably around 4:00 AM), and Lilly was still bouncing off the walls, she wanted to play a game called 'Would You Rather'; a game in which you ask the other person "which would you rather do...(A - something awful), or (B - something else awful). Well, this was one of the questions Lilly asked me, and it cracked me up so hard:
Lilly: "Would you rather eat a broom, or have to go to a parent-teacher conference with no pants on"?
Me: "No pants, but with underwear"?
Lilly: "Nope, no panties either".
Me: "I'd eat the broom".
Lilly: "Yeah, 'cuz you'd get arrested for being naked".
EAT A BROOM?!?! Even though we were supposed to be trying to go to sleep, I couldn't help but laugh hysterically at the notion of eating a broom! XD
And at some other point last night, I caught a rare glimpse of the elusive (and rather large) cricket that has taken up residence in a corner of the bedroom next to my side of the bed. I normally try to scoop unwelcome critters up into a cup or something so I can fling them back outside where they belong, but some things, you just can't do that with (or at least I can't; I'm almost as squeamish about crickets as I am with big spiders). Luckily, the crickets that get in the house surprisingly don't chirp at all (you'd figure they would). You wouldn't even realize that they're there, except for if they happen to crawl over something in the floor (like a newspaper, for example), and that's when you can hear their little feet and antennae making little scritchy-scratchy noises. One night, I heard the scritchy-scratching of little cricket feet, but I couldn't see the cricket. So I got the bright idea that I could put the cat in the area of the scratchy racket, and she would track down and murder the cricket for me. I tried it, but as soon as I put the cat down, of course the cricket-scritching stopped, so the cat didn't even realize that there was anything for her to get to murder in the vicinity. Well, last night, I heard the cricket-scritching loud and clear, and when I raised up in the bed, I saw the cricket crawling on the floor close by. So I grabbed one of my flip-flops and SMACKED the cricket. It was in a crumpled little wad, and I was satisfied with my achievement. I thought to myself that I'd pick its carcass up and fling it outside in the morning (if the cat didn't find it and eat it). :P Lilly kept me awake for quite a bit longer. Eventually, I just so happened to look over on the floor where the cricket's carcass had been, but it was GONE. The cat hadn't even been over there, so that means that the whack I had given it with my flip-flop had merely knocked it out! Maybe I can get the cat to find and attack it sometime soon. Stupid crickets in the house! Uhh!
Right now, Jamie's on his way up to Illinois to go visit some of his relatives that live up there. I'm secretly really excited that he won't be home for a few days, so hopefully Lilly will stay in her own bedroom, and leave me alone so that I can get some peaceful night's sleeps in mine. I just hope that nothing comes up while Jamie's gone that I'd really need him bad for (like getting a giant spider or 3-inch bee out of the house)!
Speaking of critters around the house, when me and Lilly were outside earlier this afternoon, we saw that there were a total of 6 frogs of various sizes (the biggest one being the 'disgruntled' one) in a pretty small area behind the house. This is the time of year when we start seeing tons of teeny-tiny little baby frogs crossing the driveway. I saw the first one of the season just a day or two ago, and I captured it and brought it in the house to take a picture of it to show everybody just how tiny it was. It was hopping around all over the place, so we had to try to contain it in a bowl to take its picture. And the closest coin we had nearby was a dime, so I slid the dime close to the frog to try to show how tiny it was in the picture. It would have been neat if the frog had cooperated and actually hopped onto the dime, but it was too hyper, freaked out, and kept nearly escaping, so this picture was the best we could do, before having to put it back outside in the flowerbed where I had found it:
I think technically these 'frogs' are actually 'toads', but here in the South, we just say 'frogs'. You know, how some places call this
a "soda", "pop", or "soft drink", well, here in the South, it's a "Coke". Even if it looks like this
we still call it a "Coke". And if you're really a hillbilly, you might even call it a "Co-Colie" (which is 'hick-ese' for "Coca-Cola).
So 'frog'/'toad', 'tomAto'/'toMAHto', you know how it goes.
Anyway, on the same subject as critters that I've discovered around the house recently, I noticed a small snakeskin that a snake had shedded off on our crosstie wall the other day. Well, a day or two later, I met the snake that the skin had come from. I was walking to the edge of the woods to toss something out (or something to that effect) -- and it's a good thing that I always look at the ground in front of my feet when I walk -- when all of a sudden, I saw the snake laying there on the ground right in front of me. Of course I let out a loud "YEEEEE"!!! and briskly stepped back. After I got over the initial surprise, I looked to make sure it wasn't venomous (it wasn't), and of course I took some pictures of it:
It looks like it's had something to eat recently (or it's pregnant)! :/
NOTE: I just googled it and discovered that it was a garter snake, which of course is non-venomous. I also learned that they DO eat frogs, among other things (which is probably why it's hanging around our house, since we have an abundance of frogs). So its belly is probably fat because it ate a frog (or like I said, it's pregnant); I also learned that these garter snakes have their babies live (they don't lay eggs), and when they do have babies, they can have more than 50 babies at one time! :O
Anyway...good to know! Now whenever we go outside, we keep an eye out for this snake since we know it's hanging around (just so it won't catch us off guard and give us a heart attack)! :)
Let me think...what else has happened lately...? Well, we went to another rodeo this past weekend (since the horse arena is literally just a few minutes' drive from our house), and it was fun. We didn't make it there in time to see the bronc riding (which is one of my favorite parts), but the other two highlights (for me, at least), was a lady that did a little bit of trick riding, and rode her horses through a ring of fire (you've probably got that Johnny Cash song in your head now; sorry)! :/
And mine & Jamie's nephew John rode a bull again. He's really young; just in high school. He has been hurt a few times, but these days the bull riders do wear some protective gear and special helmets. John's never made it to 8 seconds yet (I think he usually averages about 5 seconds), but he has made it in the top 3 places several times. He's scheduled to ride in rodeos in several nearby counties and states over the next 6 weeks, so hopefully everything will go OK. Here's a video of his bull ride from last weekend:
It might not look like he did that great, but he did just about as well as most of the other guys that rode that evening.
Just to prove that we hillbillies who go to rodeos on a semi-frequent basis and call this
a 'Co-Colie', I'll have you know that not all hillbillies are ignorant. On Monday as I was in town, sitting in my car with the windows rolled down, waiting for Lilly to get done with her hour-long dance class, it must have been around 7:00 PM, because the chimes in the historic courthouse bell tower were playing music, as they always do at certain times. I stopped and listened closely for a minute because I recognized the tune, but it was one that I never in a million years would expect to hear chiming out of a bell tower in 'the sticks'. What was the tune? It was a portion of the first aria from the opera Carmen!
Here's a link to the Wikipedia site so you can listen to it and know which tune I'm talking about:
Hmm. Purty classy. Kinda makes ya wanna grab yerself a cold co-colie & a moon pie & set out on the porch & think about life fer a while, don't it?
LOL!
Speaking of the historic courthouse in our town, I did actually think to check the clock that is currently up in the bell tower, and it has an 'IV' for the '4', just as the original clock did. Heh!
Let me see...what else can I tell y'all about. Oh yeah! I had to go to Blue Ridge today to pick up Lilly's prescription from her pediatrician. On my way back, I just had to pull the car over so I could take a picture of this hilarious sign:
LOL!!!
Later in the afternoon, Jamie needed to get some sleep before he started his long drive up to Illinois in the middle of the night, so I decided that me and Lilly should do some 'outside' things to make sure the house would be quiet enough so that Jamie could sleep in peace. So me and Lilly went out metal detecting with the metal detector we had borrowed from Dad. Lilly dug up some kind of aluminum drink can from the side of the road. Then we ventured up into our hayfield. Jamie did some metal detecting in the field before, but he only found a handle to some old bucket, and some other random hunk of metal that I think probably came off of a tractor at some point in the past. When me and Lilly were in the field, though, I got a really big hit, and I was excited, because I was under the impression that whatever piece of metal was setting off the detector might be valuable. I mean, the little arrow on the detector was pointing in the 'silver', '$1' range. The detector will tell you if the metal item is just a 'pull tab' off an aluminum drink can and stuff like that. I mean, I don't have a whole lot of experience with metal detecting, but when I threw my ring down on the ground to test the detector with, it gave the same kind of reading and high-pitched beeps as the patch of ground in the hayfield was giving.
So me and Lilly started digging. And of course Lilly quickly got bored because of her ADD and explored around elsewhere nearby. While I was still feverishly digging, Lilly found a cool little old clear glass bottle. Right now, I've got it soaking in water in the sink, but the bottom of it is embossed with the words "McCormick" (and when I first saw that, I assumed it was some kind of old cooking spice bottle, like that old bottle of McCormick vanilla extract that we found recently). But under the name McCormick, it also said "Iron Glue"! I'd never heard of that before. It was totally unexpected and neat!
I googled it, and this is a picture of what the old glue bottle would have looked like originally with the label on it and everything:
I thought it was pretty cool. I love finding old stuff and researching around to see what it used to be. I guess you could call it Hillbilly Archaeology. It's fun! :D
Anyway, I kept on digging, and finally unearthed the 'treasure'!:
It was some kind of old, really heavy metal hoop of some kind! (I was trying to hold my hand up to show how dirty it was from me struggling to dig and pull the hoop out of the ground).
Here's Lilly with the hoop (and holding the glue bottle in her hand):
And here's a closeup of the hoop:
It was a very satisfying treasure! Finding this hoop only whetted our appetite to find more stuff, so we swung the metal detector around some more and found something else nearby:
This random hunk of rusty metal. I have no idea what it used to be. It's got this weird thing on it (it looks kinda like a barnacle in the picture above). Here's a closeup of the 'barnacle':
What the heck? I have no idea!
One more exciting (?) thing happened a day or two ago. My laptop almost caught on fire! Well, actually, the power cord that plugs in to the side had somehow become frayed to the point that the wires were exposed, and it started sparking like fireworks! It was extremely alarming! I don't know a whole lot about electricity, but I've read enough first aid brochures to know that electrical sparks = potential for being electrocuted to death and/or fire (stop drop and roll)! So I yelled for Jamie (who was in the living room watching TV; I was sitting on the bed in my bedroom with the sparking laptop sitting on the flammable bed). Even though I yelled to Jamie that it was an emergency, it took him a while to finally tear himself away from the TV to come save me from being electrocuted while the house went up in flames around us. I had him unplug the laptop from the wall, and the sparking stopped. Crisis averted. But my laptop is most likely toast. It's been torn up for several months now. Lilly had been riding the skateboard around in the living room, and bumped into something near my laptop (the laptop was either sitting on the arm of the loveseat, or on the table next to it). Anyway, when she bumped into something, it caused my laptop to go crashing down onto the hardwood floor, directly on its side, causing the charge plug to go cramming really far up inside the charge port hole. Surprisingly, my laptop still worked fine; but you had to make sure the charger thing stayed rammed in really hard in place so it could still charge. And my laptop's battery doesn't last that long at all, so you basically have to leave it plugged in the whole time you're using it. Well, I guess with all the strain of the precarious position that the power cord was forced to be in, it finally wore thin and frayed enough to expose the wires. Unfortunately, the problem can't be fixed by just getting a new power cord. The problem is that the charge port on the side of the laptop has evidently come loose inside, rendering it impossible to charge anymore. Thankfully, I did have enough laptop battery life left in it to quickly save my important files & stuff I didn't want to lose to a thumb drive, so that was good. But anyway, I don't really know what to do about my broken laptop. Right now, I'm limping along on Lilly's laptop, but it really sucks because neither of the 'shift' keys work, the 'a' key doesn't work, and the '1'/'!' button doesn't work. Have you ever tried to type without using a 'shift' key, the 'a' button, or the 1/! key?!? It TOTALLY SUCKS!!! To get around the problem, I had to enable the On-Screen Keyboard, and use that whenever I need to 'shift', type an 'a', or a '1' or a '!' Which is constantly. So it's horrible. Maybe I'll try to see if my smarty brother can fix my broken laptop. We tried fixing my Kindle Fire recently, but it was a total failure, and off to the garbage dump it had to go. I don't know. It sucks. I don't really know what to do about it. Maybe we can fix this laptop with the dysfunctional 'shift' and 'a' and '1/!' keys. I'd hate to have to spend the money to get a dang new laptop. Grr. Oh, well; if we attempt to fix anything, I'm sure that hilarity will ensue, and I'll be sure to tell you all about it...! ;D (Hey, you gotta at least get a laugh out of it to make the misfortune worthwhile)...! :/
I'll keep you posted...! Wish me luck...!
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