Tat's all, folks!

Thursday afternoon sucked! Maybe it was the paint fumes, who knows? Anyway, I was trying to get out of town & down to see Spouse as early as possible, but a Higher Power must've wanted me to delay my departure. I didn't get the painting completely finished until after noon. As soon as the mess was cleaned up, tools put away & the car packed with things Spouse wanted, my overnight bag & the two indoor doggies, I locked up the house and set out toward the VA hospital. I drove 2 miles, turned onto the blacktop from the gravel road and went maybe a 1/4 of a mile when OHSh**!! I swear she wasn't there a moment before, but must have been lurking in the cornfield. It was the scariest thing, because she wasn't there and then, suddenly, I see her face in the corner of the windshield, on the passenger side. Running alongside the car and then INTO the side of my car! A yearling doe, too stupid to know she couldn't outrun my car & jump it at the same time, stumbled or something and went underneath the rear tire. I slammed on the brakes, as soon as I saw her tiny face in the glass and then she disappeared... underneath the front passenger window. It all happened so fast and the next thing I know, my car goes over her & I watched in the rear view mirror, as she fell to the ground, right in the middle of my lane. It was 3 in the afternoon & we rarely see deer out at that time of day. She was as dead as she was ever going to get, so I pulled back onto the road and drove to the vet office. I took Muffin and Chikki inside and used their phone to call the sheriff. They said they would send someone out to move her off the road and then inquired as to how badly my car was damaged. I looked out the window of the vet's office and was stunned to see there wasn't a hair out of place on the toylet. Not a single teensy ding from the collision. Wow!

So, that taken care of, I left my babies with the vet for an overnight stay and began my journey south. As I drove along, I realized I'd forgotten to put my wedding rings back on, after cleaning up from the painting. Then, I began to wonder if there wasn't an orphan fawn hiding in the corn & wondering why mommy wouldn't get up from the road. I turned around and headed back toward home. As I passed my poor deer victim, I saw she was probably too young to have fawned this year, so I breathed a sigh of relief on that worry. I still felt awful about it though. Sick, even.

Once at the house, I put on my rings and remembered I forgot the bag of garden fresh tomatoes that Spouse has been craving. There was a farmer's market in Watertown earlier this week and I bought him some barely ripe ones. Grabbed the bag and was eventually on the road. Crap, after 2 pm by now & I knew I was going to miss an appointment I had set up earlier in the day. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, thankfully and I had a nice, but short visit with Spouse. He was pretty tired & I was too, from going up & down the ladder during my paint project. I left his room and headed out to the motel where I like to stay. Er... liked to stay, until Thursday night.

Usually, I have gotten nice rooms there, with beds that are comfortable to sleep on. Not this trip, kids. I was given one of their older rooms that hasn't been touched by the recent remodeling they've been doing. The heat/air fan didn't work, but the room seemed a bit stuffy. The curtains didn't close all the way, so I opened up the window and walked the 1/2 mile to the front desk for a safety pin. Got back with the pin and secured the curtain, so I would feel more comfortable about sitting around in my jammies in the room. Looked for the non-existant ice bucket & returned to the front desk for one. Yay! Lookit all the calories I burned for ice. I got the ice, returned to my room and took a well deserved hot shower. I'm so glad that worked.

Once in my jammies, I sipped my Rx Stress tea and watched a little tv, to help me unwind. Half of the bed was as hard as stone, the other side wasn't bad. So, I closed the window, because I'm paranoid about open motel windows on the ground floor and snuggled under the covers for some rest. It took me a bit to finally get to sleep & when I did, I was entertaining myself with a nice dream.

Dreamt I was in Chicago, staying in a luxurious hotel, in a penthouse suite. Most of the walls of my suite were glass, giving me a panoramic view of the beautiful city lights at night. For some reason, I was standing at the railing of the loft that was in my suite and I, apparently was hosting a party. Were you there? *shrugs shoulders* I dunno, but the suite was packed. I looked at the floor below and saw a boatload of gorgeous, scantily clad men dancing and waving at me. Nothing wrong with THIS dream yet, was there? As I watched the men dancing, I could hear a persistant "beep" about every 3 minutes. The crowd in the room got really loud and somebody screamed. I turned to see what was wrong and several of the party guests were pointing at the windows and getting angry because it had started snowing. They were blaming me for the snow, since I came from S. Dakota. I never promised my dream would make sense, btw. The persisitant "beep" continued, while the crowd began discussing something about a lynching and pulled me from my slumber. I laid still for a few minutes and heard the "beep" again. It wasn't my cellphone, but the smoke alarm in the room. The battery had died and the smoke alarm insisted on it being replaced. Now. "beep" 3 freaking a.m. & the smoke alarm wants me to change the battery. Frickin' crap. I called the front desk and a pudgy man came huffing down the 1/2 mile corridor from the front desk, with the wrong kind of batteries in his pocket. After about 45 minutes, he gave up and ripped the smoke alarm off the wall, once we realized the damned thing would continue beeping, even without the current dead battery inside. One of THOSE kind of smoke alarms. Lovely. I eventually got to crawl back into my bed, after the clerk left, huffing and beeping all the way back to the front desk.

This morning I woke up with a serious case of bed head. Fixed that & took another hike down to the front of the motel for the continental breakfast. Everything was pretty well picked over, so I settled for a slice of wheat toast with peanut butter. Back to my room, put on a bit of eye makeup, while eating my breakfast and sipping my coffee. Made it to the hospital, in plenty of time for the care team/family plan of action meeting that was held on Spouse's behalf. A lot was discussed and I was able to ask lots of questions. I also, handed over the two bottles of morphine tablets, because I don't want them in the house. No sense in keeping it here, since he won't be coming home & I won't use the stuff. The meeting went well and Spouse is definitely going to a nursing home, when he is well enough. The tentative date for that transition is October 2, but that depends on if he is able to gain some more strength back by then. If not, then they'll push the date back a bit, to give him more time.

Spouse & I got to visit for a bit, then I went to buy him some clothes. Sleep pants, actually. On sale, too. Sweet. Dropped them off and then I drove to the grand establishment of Permanent Addictions. The guy who did my llama told me he would not be able to do my new tat, today, after all, but passed me on to another guy who worked there. Jon Gamache. There's a pic of him in the slide show I'm going to try to add here. Sweet guy, great personality and outlook on life. He played his music and introduced me to a group that I really like! I'm going to get the two CDs that I heard while Jon worked on my arm. Check them out... Wookie Foot. So, about 3 1/2 hours later, I have the majority of the new tat finished. It needs to heal for a couple of weeks, before he will add the scales of the fish.

The reason for this design? Okay - the fish is symbolic for Spouse, because he's a Pices. The dragonfly symbolizes me, because I like 'em & fish don't normally eat llamas. I wanted this design to be representative of the love Spouse & I share. My arm is sore as heck and I'm going to hit the sack now. Enjoy the play by play of my new tat's development. Oh ya, there's also a pic of my new haircut in that wee show. Stop laughing! ;)

My tat slideshow

New colors

Today has been a busy one for me. Well, not the entire day, but the part I was awake was busy enough. This past week, I stopped in at the Menard's in Watertown and bought the stuff I would need to paint a wall in my kitchen. I may do a couple more of the walls, but for now, want to see if I'm happy with the one wall, first. My house has a fairly pretty kitchen, but it's one drawback, for me, is the walls, ceiling and cabinets are all white. *snore* At first, I considered painting the cabinets, but changed my mind, because I'm lazy. The top cupboards have glass inserts & I was not looking forward to taking down all of the doors and taping off all of the glass. So, I took the few things off the wall *3 pics* and have been taping off the woodwork. I did put a bit of the paint on the wall, before tackling that, so I'd be able to see how the color appeals to me. It's nice, a bit more blue than I wanted, but it's drying into a lovely shade.

In the meantime, Chica-X, aka Kel, has been working on the code to allow me to return the navbar to my blog. She is a gem, folks - a real DOLL! :D

Back to work, folks. Just thought I'd check in and say, "Hey!".

Gotter Figgered!

Whelp! That's about how much work it takes, to get a post and do all that stuff, but I finally figured out how to get around not having a navbar on my blog. :D I just have to visit a link in my petting zu and then part of my navbar shows up. Go figger!

Now that's settled, I'm going to bed for a couple of hours.


Nite, er Morning, ya'll!

Ummm - Uh Oh?

So - how's it starting to look, kids? Nice, eh? Chica-X aka Kel, gets all the cred for the design stuff. Tomorrow, I will redo the links and such, if I am able to access them. There's not a nav bar in this design, so who knows if I will be able to get back to this place, once I save everything, so far, and head off to bed. It's either that, or leave my editing page open all night. I dun't think so, Lucy. ;) Still, I love it & really owe Kel bigtime, for all of her hard work and wonderful help. The gal is priceless, that's for sure!!!

My Tammy Faye Makeover

Well, obviously, my sense of color needs some work here. Actually, what I need is a better memory when it comes to the editing of the html. I found a shoutbox that I like, but still want to make the colors match the background of that background box. A work in progress, kids. I have also located several of my efx2 friends and have included linkage to their blogs here. Some of them (the respective blogs) have not been used since November of last year or even further back in time. Hopefully, they (the bloggers) will resurface here and discover the new homes.

I've got a ton of questions about this place - like how did my friends who commented already know I was here? Is there a membership list someplace or was my new blog highlighted for a minute or something? Either way, I'm glad to have been found by them. If you find your blog isn't listed & we are buds, let me know where you are blogging now, so I can edit the linkage.

So... whatcha think? Should I go with the purple eyeliner or the green? ;)

Transition

Yesterday morning, I awoke, eager to blog about the past couple of days. I'd been very busy, researching and touring the few nursing homes near enough to home, where Spouse would be placed soon. Imagine my dismay at finding my blog gone - unavailable because the server was gone. Apparently, there was some sort of phishing scam connected to the removal of the entire blog community from the server. Some yadumaz had exploited our server, through the scripts or whatever & this was the third time it had occurred. So, because there was some sort of TOS violation, the entire blog site was yanked off the air. All of the hard work and creative endeavors of so many wonderful people was simply wiped away.

That's why I'm here now. Eventually, I shall customize my blog settings, so that the place seems more "me". In the meanwhile, I'm going to look forward to seeing my friends here... hopefully. They will recognize me, for now, by my pix of my previous critters. :D

Lurgle on!!!

Painful Gifts

Yep, it's the last time I celebrate the end of a decade!!! If I ever mention planning on doing so in the future, please tie me up long enough to read this post. As most of you know, Spouse & I were married ten years ago, on this day. I drove down and spent the day with him, which included a beautiful and quite yummy cake that I ordered from the store. We were able to share the cake with some of the other veterans on his ward and the nursing staff. I brought a chunk home for me to have for breakfast & he's got a chunk for tomorrow, too. That was nice, sharing the cake with the guys & nurses. They enjoyed it too. I got some nice bike gloves for Spouse - the type without fingers, so he won't hurt his hands wheeling himself around in his chariot. I picked up a nice Sony CD/mp3/FM radio walkman for him, as well & took some of his fave CDs down, so he can enjoy his music. He was rocking out to Santana when I left to go home.

So, what did I get? You really wanna know? I'll try to condense it into a list...

the first thing I got was a dog bite on my calf, last night. One of the outside kids accidentally bit my leg, when he was going for another of the kids. The other kid moved his nose and my leg took the snap. It was an accident, otherwise, he would have been taken to the vet today, for the long nap. That's 1, Boscoe. Ouch.

A spider bit me on the bottom of my foot, while I was sleeping. Perhaps it happened this morning, while I was oversleeping because I forgot to set the alarm & my sis forgot she was supposed to give me a wake up call. Either way, I slept through the bite & now it itches. At least, it's on the opposite leg as the dog bite. Ouch & itch.

A torn muscle in my lower back, when I leaned over to put on my undies, after the shower. That's the first time I realized you can actually hear a muscle rip. What a weird riiiiip-pop sound that was. Ouch.

Had a few near misses and mechanical mishaps, en route to the VA, but am glad the car didn't roll and I survived the rest, as well. Damn lucky, to be honest. I should be dead, but no scratches and no dings in the car either. Can you say miracle? By the way, that ditch is a helluva lot deeper than it looks from the road. Whew!

Started paying Much better attention and had a fairly uneventful trip & visit with Spouse. I left, with enough time to make it home before dark thirty and stopped at Sonic to get a cherry limeade for the ride. Love those things. Every time I drink one, I think back to the time my sis & I were working on Mom's house, following her funeral. We went to Sonic every day for the cherry limeades. Now, when I have one, a smile is guaranteed to be plastered on my face. Funny how some foods and drinks will do that. I got a huge one, so I'm still drinking & smiling. :D

Stopped at the Target in Watertown, mostly to drain the vein & to check out if there was anything in the clearance that I might want. Spouse told me to go get myself something as his anniversary present for me, since he is unable to get to the stores. Found a pretty pair of earrings in the clearance and headed toward the registers. En route, I went past the jewelry counters & discovered a bracelet that matches, exactly, the new earrings. In the budget & now mine, mine, all mine! Pretty, sparkly and they both match a ring I recently got. Nice! Thank you, Spouse.

Began the trek home, now that I'd found a little something from Spouse to me, and drove past all the burger joints without stopping. I thought the day had finally turned around & was going to close nicely. Pulled into our driveway, glad to see the porch light and turned off the car. Home sweet home, right? Went into the garage to feed the outside kids their dinner and took 4 tasty biscuits out of the jar that I keep in the file cabinet. Yes, I said that. If I left it out in the open, they'd figure how to take the lid off the jar. I know they would. That or eat through the jar, to get the biscuits. Handed one to Boscoe, one to Lil' Bit, one to Ingo and then started to hand one to Anwar. He was excited and chomped down on the biscuit, and my thumbnail. His fang left a tiny blue bruise in the middle of my thumbnail. It hurt so bad, the next finger hurts, too. That's 1, Anni. It'll heal. So will the other dog bite on my leg, the spider bite, the torn back muscle and the blister on my heel.

The way I see it, I earned the earrings and bracelet & so I finally decided what Spouse is getting me for our anniversary. He's buying me a new tattoo. I have some scars on my left arm, from way back when I was a kid & a cutter. I'd like something pretty with dragonflies and pansies... anyone want to contribute a design that is about 2.5 to 3 inches squarish?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?