Meet Fred

Fred was my Valentine's Day present this year.

I have an awesome husband, in case you didn't know. He indulges my inner white-trash obsession with pink flamingos.

I am sitting in a room that is maybe 12 feet by 15 feet and there are one, two, SEVEN flamingos in here. And two more outside on the porch.

Three of these were gifts from my friends Beth and Susan. Most recently Susan got me a pair of plastic flamingos that I couldn't possibly put outside. It's not because I'm afraid of what the neighbors would think (fuck them). No, the dogs would chew them up. So my wonderful, handy husband mounted (heh...I said mounted) them in wood blocks. Wood blocks that he painted pink! And they live atop the shelf of my desk that you can see there in the picture. You can also see 1 of 4 power strips that live in this room. I have a lot of crap.

And yes, I just happen to have some pink paint laying around the house because I picked out the most atrocious trio of paint from Lowe's last winter and my husband and kids painted my kitchen for me. The trim is pink. More accurately, the trim is fruit punch. I hate it. As soon as he gets back to working those long-ass days I am going to go buy some more paint and change it. I didn't think everyone else would like to look at an orange and turquoise kitchen so I picked a soft yellow and what turned out to be lavender. Hideous. I can maybe live with the yellow, but I am going to change the lavender to turquoise and the fruit punch trim will become orange. Tang perhaps...just swap one fruity beverage for another. And it probably sounds even more hideous than it really is. The only thing painted yellow and lavender is the crappy paneling around the bulkhead above the cabinets. The walls are still white. The fruit punch trim goes all the way around the ceiling.

Why these colors you ask? I don't really know, other than these are the colors of the fiesta ware that I dearly want but do not have. I spend hours on amazon looking at all of the ridiculously priced fiesta ware, dreaming. Dreaming of the day when they will live in my kitchen. Living in my kitchen in their own special cabinet. Their own special cabinet that does not exist. It's my dream, remember?

I do actually have 3 pieces--I know what my next post is about!

I'm Optimistic...

Yeah, that's the name of my new layout.

Huh.

That is not the word that most would use to describe me.

Bitchy. That would be one. Mean. That would be another.

But, no, I choose to be optimistic. Life is going to Hell in a hand basket all around me and I am trying to come out on the other side unscathed.

I might just make it.

I have cake.

And wine.

Back to the Beginning

Well, I think I have the comment (or lack thereof) situation handled.

Ack, my blog is ugly. I have already declared tomorrow a computer day--I have lots of very important stuff to do. Like load an mp3 player full of motown. And prettify my blog. (Hey, prettify is a word, according to spell check).

Do you know that I compose the most awesome blog posts while I am laying in bed, either right before I go to sleep or right before I get up in the morning? The morning ones are kinda wacky, but they are hilarious. You would really like them.

Too bad I never write them.

Erlack

Well, FebBloPo is kaput.

Didn't take me long, but it's the middle of winter and not much interesting is happening. Other than me being molested by a blood hound. What more do you people want from me?

Widget

Who's got a new widget?

I do!

Fudge

The weather is absolute crap and I am sick of it. To make matters worse, yahoo mocks me. I have my local weather on my home page but it insists on also showing me Brazil. Everyday I go in and take it out. Every time I restart it, it's back:


I'm calling The Shat to have him help me book a flight on priceline. See you later.

Lost

My head is still swimming from all the new information I learned last night.

The Man in Black/John Locke is the Smoke Monster!

Desmond was on the plane!

Shannon wasn't!

Sayid was dead--and then he wasn't!

The re-cap on EW.com is 7 pages long today. I had to give it a rest after 3 and a half pages. I'll try to finish it tonight. I haven't read Inferno since 11th grade. I'm a little rusty...I hope there won't be a pop quiz at the end!

Ties

NaBloPoMo isn't just for November. No, you get a chance every month to blog every day. Evidently February being the shortest month is a huge selling point...thought I'd give it another try.

The theme for this month is ties. I am an orphaned only child so I should run out of tie posts fairly quickly.

See you tomorrow!

Mad Dog

This happened about a week ago. I probably should have written about it while it was fresher in my memory, but it was still too traumatic. Yes, I was traumatized by a blood hound. It's okay, you can laugh. Every one else has...everyone but me.

Last Sunday my dog (you know, Sheriff John T. Chance, aka Chance) went missing. We were pretty sure what had happened. The neighbor has a blood hound named Al (as in Al Capone?) who breaks thru his radio fence and runs to our house every chance he gets, which lately has been daily. He shows up and he and Chance frolic and wrestle and take turns being top dog in the doggy-style. Chance has about 2 acres or so in his fence area so they run from one side to the other chewing each others ears and snapping at each others feet. Evidently during one of these passes they got close to the fence and just barreled right on thru it (to be clear, this is conjecture...we don't know how he got out exactly, but think this is pretty close to how it happened).

Once he found himself on the other side of the fence there was no way he was going to take the shock coming back across. He was seen, with Al, in our yard arund 3:30 pm. He was missing at 4. The only dog at our house then was Katie (aka Katie Elder).
I was at work and found out about all this at 7:30 when I called home. The Big Man had spent a couple of hours looking for them. A hunter had spotted them about a quarter of a mile away in a pasture, headed for the woods. So Big Daddy looks and looks, but can't find them anywhere.

I decided to take the long way around on my way home after work that night. I had been to the grocery and it was about 12:15 am. Lo and behold I found the two frolicking puppies just exiting a stand of cane. I stopped my truck, got out and called Chance and he came running to get in. Unfortunately, Al bounded right on up after him. I grabbed him by his collar and tried to pull him out and he growled at me. Then he tried to bite me. Nice.

I shut the door and did a little jumping up and down and a little more yelling and screaming. Chance curled up in the driver's seat to take a nap while Al sprawled across the console and licked his head. Chance's head. Al then tried to curl up in the passenger seat but couldn't quite fit because of my gi-normous dinner bucket. Oh, did I mention that they were both very, very muddy? And have you ever seen the size of a blood hound's paws? So, I open the door and attempt to scoot Chance out of my seat so I could just drive them to our house. He was having none of that. So I had my left foot on the running board, my right foot on the brake, my left hand on the steering wheel. I reach up to the steering column with my right hand to drop it into gear and the frickin' dog lunges at me and tries to bite me again. Motherfucker.

I'm done. Luckily I had my cell phone with me so I called and woke up The Man. This is already a really long post, so I'll just cut to the chase. We got the dogs out of my truck. Chance jumped in Man's truck. When Al tried to follow Man tried to stop him and he nearly took Man's arm off. Man beat him with maglite. Al jumped in Man's truck anyway. Had a little trouble rousing neighbor from his slumber...finally did. He managed to coax his dog into his truck. The End.

Well, it was the end for Al. I like to think he had a brain tumor and was going to die soon anyway. But I had a dream that he was inside the house last night, growling at me.

I am traumatized for life.