Exceedingly Mundane

I swear it did, I didn’t even see it in my cart, and then it was time to check out. And there was a line. And I couldn’t just give up my space in line to go put it back. Wherever it came from. I’m not even sure what part of Sam’s would even have something like this. I swear.

P.S. Plus, it’s such a practical thing, it can’t be called a splurge or even a happy. A happy is a Sonic shake, Godiva or Ghiradelli chocolates, a DVD, a CD, Bath & Body Works stuff, things like that. Certainly not household storage items.

Well, I haven’t blogged much personal the last day or two because nothing has really been going on. Just staying home, doing the wifely thing and all. But, now I have something mildly irritating to report.

I think I smell a rat.

Or more precisely, Tim discovered a rat tonight. ARGH. We’ve been through this before, for those of you who don’t know. A year or two ago, we had a huge one (maybe more) that was apparently living in our attic. One of them died and we suddenly smelled a stench in a certain part of the house, where he was dead right above in the attic. Anyway, Tim was convinced they were getting into the attic via the chimeny, and its rotting masonite-type facing. I *thought* we had fixed that problem last year when we had vinyl siding put on the house. Tim assured me then that we shouldn’t have rats in the attic any more. And that’s not where he found one, so he was probably right on target with that. He found one, where believe it or not, he has found one before, before the attic incident. Living in our gas grill.

ICK!

They apparently like to nest in our grill in the winter, we had this problem a couple of years ago. The things were trying to build a nest in the base, under the burner, and Tim found it, put out a bunch of rat poison and we haven’t had that problem since. Until tonight. Tim went to grill out some chicken for us, and found a nest in the grill again. Actually, he said he saw the rat, said he was big and fat. HMMPH. I bet, feasting off no telling what around here. He had built a nest out of the expensive landscape fabric we used when we built the deck. We bought a roll of that stuff to cover the edges of the patio, where grass was growing, and where we were building the deck on top of, because we knew that since grass had been there for years, it would probably continue to grow and come up through the deck. So we put a bunch of black landscape fabric out. Tim found a huge wad of it, ripped to shreds, in the bottom of the grill. A nice warm nest. What’s worse, is that last summer I got him a really nice, heavy duty, thick grill cover for his grill. The darn rat chewed several holes in the grill cover to get in and out of the grill to his nest. ARGH. I do hate critters. If its not snakes I’m worried about, then there are frogs jumping around, big black birds in my bird feeders, black cats crawling all over my deck, fence and yard, and now rats all over the place. Heaven help me, why are there so many critters in suburbia? Please, make them go away!

I got this email from my buddy Leslie and thought about forwarding it on out to several people, but decided to post it here instead. 🙂

Subject: Psalm 55:22

This was written by a Hospice of Metro Denver physician …..

I just had one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and wanted to share it with my family and dearest friends: I was driving home from a meeting this evening about 5, stuck in traffic on Colorado Blvd., and the car started to choke and splutter and die – I barely managed to coast, cursing, into a gas station, glad only that I would not be blocking traffic and would have a somewhat warm spot to wait for the tow
truck. It wouldn’t even turn over.

Before I could make the call, I saw a woman walking out of the “quickie mart” building, and it looked like she slipped on some ice and fell into a gas pump, so I got out to see if she was okay. When I got there, it looked more like she had been overcome by sobs than that she had fallen; she was a young woman who looked really haggard with dark circles under her eyes. She dropped something as I helped her up, and I picked it up to give it to her. It was a nickel.

At that moment, everything came into focus for me: the crying woman, the ancient Suburban crammed full of stuff with 3 kids in the back (1 in a car seat), and the gas pump reading $4.95. I asked her if she was okay and if she needed help, and she just kept saying “I don’t want my kids to see me crying,” so we stood on the other side of the pump from her car. She said she was driving to California and that things were very hard for her right now. So I asked, “And you were praying?” That made her back away from me a little, but I assured her I was not a crazy person and said, “He heard you, and He sent me.”

I took out my card and swiped it through the card reader on the pump so she could fill up her car completely, and while it was fueling walked to the next door McDonald’s and bought 2 big bags of food, some gift certificates for more, and a big cup of coffee. She gave the food to the kids in the car, who attacked it like wolves, and we stood by the pump eating fries and talking a little. She told me her name, and that she lived in
Kansas City. Her boyfriend left 2 months ago and she had not been able to make ends meet. She knew she wouldn’t have money to pay rent Jan 1, and finally in desperation had finally called her parents, with whom she hadnot spoken in about 5 years. They lived in California and said she could come live with them and try to get on her feet there. So she packed up everything she owned in the car. She told the kids they were going to California for Christmas, but not that they were going to live there.

I gave her my gloves, a little hug and said a quick prayer with her for safety on the road. As I was walking over to my car, she said, “So, are you like an angel or something?” This definitely made me cry. I said, “Sweetie, at this time of year angels are really busy, so sometimes God uses regular people.” It was so incredible to be a part of someone else’s miracle. And of course, you guessed it, when I got in my car it started right away and got me home with no problem. I’ll put it in the shop tomorrow to check, but I suspect the mechanic won’t find anything wrong. Sometimes the angels fly close enough to you that you can hear the flutter of their wings…

Psalms 55:22 “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”

Saw this on another blog, pretty good one, so I stole it!

Name the….

1. Total amount of music files on your computer: Well, I have no idea. I have about 5 or 6 CD’s ripped to the drive, plus a few misc mp3 files I have downloaded from various places on the web.

2. The last CD you bought was: Gosh, that I bought, I have no idea. I haven’t bought music in a while. I’ve been buying a lot more DVD’s lately than CD’s.

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? “Please Remember Me” by Tim McGraw

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:

These are so hard for me to be decisive and pick. Let’s see…
1. Unanswered Prayers by Garth Brooks
2. Beautiful Tonight by Eric Clapton
3. American Soldier by Toby Keith
4. Faithfully by Journey
5. Any song from the album “Hysteria” by Def Leppard

Be sure to go check out the Photo Gallery on Hambones (provided you are a registered user – you have to be logged in to view Photos, remember!). I just added a new album. I already had one for Grayson and Ava Clair, a place to put pictures that their parents sent me. Now, I just added one for Ethan and Abby, to post pictures that Amanda and Mark send us. Amanda sent me some really great pictures this morning, and I just added them to their own new album. I also re-ordered them, so they should be on the first page. Older pictures are now further back.

Anyway, Amanda said that Ethan has a new favorite thing – getting out his squirt gun and dueling with Obi-Wan and Darth Vader while Star Wars is on! They even got a picture of it, too cute! Now, I need to get one from Trent and Shanna of Grayson doing his best Spiderman impersonation. Excuse me, not an impersonation, I’ve heard that Grayson actually IS Spiderman!! 😀

Well, looks like tonight is going to be a long night. Tim is on-call this week and they’ve been having problems. He has had to work late the last two nights, including last night during the wee hours of the morning. Then, he gets called right after 5 PM tonight, while he was still at the office, and stayed late to work on the problems more. He didn’t get home till about 7 PM. The new place he was going to pick up food from (Jimmy’s) had already closed, so he offered to take me out to eat. Sweet thing, he even took me where I wanted to go, instead of where he wanted to go. So, we went to Golden Dragon in Madison. I got to eat all the shrimp and cabbage I wanted to my hearts content. YUM-O! We stayed a while and talked, and even had coffee with our almond cookies. They make really good almond cookies there.

Anyway, we got home a little before 9, and just finished watching my fav new show, Battlestar Galactica. We’re both going to read our books till a little before 11:30. Tim has to get on a conference call at 11:30. He said if it goes well, it will be under an hour. If not, there’s no telling how long it might last. And, he said, if it goes well, he might not get called any more this weekend. If not, he will defintely be called more. Looks like a long night and possibly a long weekend for him. Poor baby. I hate it for him. He doesn’t seem to mind a bit, says it’s all part of the job, but I hate that he has to work so much, so late, be woken up in the middle of the night, have all this stress on him, etc. He says it doesn’t bother him! 🙂

Well, I tried to super-glue the plastic clip back into place on the back of my beloved pedometer. Gave it 24 hours, then went to clip it to my belt yesterday before heading out on a very long shopping trip. It snapped immediately in the same place. The Super Glue did not fix it. I was very very unhappy. I miss my pedometer. 😛

Tim tried another round of Super Glue last night and has a heavy object on it, weighting it down. I’m going to give it all day today and tonight and try again tomorrow. I don’t think we’re going to be able to save it. The clip is part of the whole unit and without a clip to attach to my pants, belts, jeans or whatever, a pedometer ain’t worth much. Darn it. I love my pedometer and wear it every day.

AND. I had just hit my all-time high the day before it broke. Logged 15, 997 steps that day. It helped that we walked twice, 4 miles, but still.

OK, all you blog readers out there, here’s your question of the day…. hypothetical, of course. Not that I would ever, in a million years, go on Survivor 😀

If you were to be a “Survivor” what luxury item would you bring?

I have no idea what they allow or what they ban. I would try to take toilet paper 😮 or a hairbrush or shampoo or toothbrush, but I don’t think they would allow it. I bet they are strict on this stuff. I would probably ask to take a picture of Tim (aww, ain’t that sweet). Barring that, I have no idea. I know I could never do this show, I could never try to live out there like that.

So…. how about you, what would you bring?

Poor Tim. He’s having a rough week being on-call, and we still have this weekend and all next week to get through. They are having problems at work, and he had gotten called out night before last (Wednesday night). We thought we had “escaped” last night when we made it through all of our TV shows. But, no. They called about 1:30 AM and woke us up out of a deep sleep with a problem. Tim had to get up and work for a couple of hours. He thinks the problem is still not fixed, it appears to be random and not following any kind of pattern. I hope they figure it out today, otherwise, our weekend may be more of the same. Poor Tim. At least on the weekend, we can take naps and sleep late.

Well, Tim is on-call this week and they just called him about a problem. No idea how long he will be. We were able, thankfully, to get our important TV viewing in before they called, hehehe! We watched Lost and Alias, and were just settling in to read our books. He’s about finished with his (“The Tristan Betrayal” by Robert Ludlum) and I am fixing to start a new one (women’s fiction). So, I guess I’ll go read for a while, I hope he doesn’t have to work too long. 🙂 Poor Tim, on call every 2 weeks. I hate it for him.

As always, I blog-surf and “steal” from other sites. Here’s another one…. post your answers in a comment and let us know these five things about you!

1. On a scale of 1-5 how do you feel about scales? Um, how about a 3. I have a pair and use them, but try not to be a slave to them.

2. What is your favourite four letter word? S-A-L-E 😀

Bathroom tissue: over or under? Over the top, drives me crazy if it’s “upside-down”. Argh.

What is your favourite toast topping? Grape Jelly

How often do you polish your silverware? I don’t.

I just uploaded 3 new pictures of Grayson and Ava Clair that Trent sent me. They are in their album, on the second page of the Photo Gallery section of Hambones. They are from this past Sunday, before Ava Clair’s baby dedication.

I also have an announcement we got from Mark and Amanda of Abby’s birth that I want to post, but I haven’t gotten a chance to scan that one yet. Coming soon! 🙂

WAH – I’m having a bad day. My pedometer broke this morning. I love that thing and wear it every single day.

Suzanne gave it to me for my birthday last year, in October, and I think I have worn it every single day, except maybe one or two at most, since then. It really helps me to be conscious of how much walking I do in a day, and I really use it to try to get to my 10,000 steps per day. Which, by the way, is easy if we do our walk in the subdivision.

Anyway, this morning, I tacked it on my sweat pants as normal, and a couple of hours later, I heard it go clank and hit the floor. I thought it had just popped off, it has before, but I looked down and it was in two pieces. The main part in one piece and the back side of the clip that clamps on my pants or belt was in another piece. So the plastic clip broke. I broke out the super glue (from my junk drawer!) and went to work on it. I’m going to let it sit 24 hours and hope that it won’t break again tomorrow. If not, I think I’m going to have to go get me another one. I really like wearing one every day. It makes me a lot more cognizant of taking more steps. Especially if I’m on the phone, I have a tendency to sit down and talk, and when I realize I have my pedometer on, I try to get up and pace while I talk. Things like that.

Well, this just makes me so sad, really. Dodie LOVED to do crossword puzzles. I can remember when she was first starting to use a computer, that was one thing she asked me about. Is there software to do crossword puzzles? Back then, I think there was just software on the market to make your own, and maybe one or two that had a very finite number of puzzles in them. Nowadays, with the advent of the Internet, there are probably tons of places online to play daily crossword puzzles free. I just ran across this one by blog-surfing, one at USA Today.

Click Here if you want to go check it out and work one today. They change daily, apparently, at least on weekdays.

I think I just found a question for tomorrow’s poll – do you work crossword puzzles. Sadly, my answer will be no. I never picked up that habit from my mom. 😥

I just posted a new poll on the home page of Hambones. I got the idea for this one as I was blog-surfing last night, where a stay-at-home mom was talking about the monumental chore of cleaning out her junk drawers in the kitchen. Seems she has a large kitchen and several children and was talking (very humorously) about how much stuff is in them, especially kids things. Got me thinking about that.

We have what I would consider two “junk” type drawers in our kitchen, in that, they do not contain exclusively kitchen related items (food, towels, utensils, silverware, and I have a drawer that has foil, saran wrap, ziplocs, etc, which I consider kitchen items). These two drawers seem to stay full of stuff we only need periodically, for the most part. I have one big drawer that has (among many other dozens of items), scissors, notepads, pens/pencils, my coupon holder, recipes that I have clipped out of newspapers and magazines, instruction booklets for small appliances, etc. The other is truly the junk drawer in the house, containing batteries, screwdrivers, super glue, candles for birthday cakes, rubber bands, twistie ties, etc.

I think a lot of this stuff should go somewhere else, and not waste my “precious” space in the kitchen, but I don’t really have a place for it to go. The only other choice would be the cabinets in the laundry room, but most of this stuff is small (that’s why it’s in a drawer). So, it inevitably gets stuck in the drawers in the kitchen.

OK – here’s your task – name some of the things you guys have in your junk drawers? Are the drawers in the kitchen or another area of the house? Do you need to clean them out? And any other useless information you’d like to let me know about your junk drawers! (Can you tell I’m feeling stifled by our polling system lately, just not enough room there to talk about everything I want to talk about!)

🙂