Halloween!

My Halloween costume

I LOVE Halloween. I still dress up. I eat candy. I bounce around like an idiot. It’s great fun, it never gets old. This year, I’m a bee. So is my daughter. We make the CUTEST pair.

 

 

I’m afraid I’ve already had a few wardrobe malfunctions. My earrings blow in the wind and smack me in the face. Then, my antennae got stuck in the ficus tree in my office. I couldn’t move; I was stuck. Kelly Jo across the hall had to untangle me and set me free. Finally, the back of my black skirt got caught in my black tights, exposing my white underwear with the big red bird on the butt. Whoops. I have no idea how many people saw that before I fixed the problem.

 

 

But still, no worries here. I guarantee you, I’m having a great time, bare butt ‘n all. Happy Halloween!

Told you so

I’m writing this to document, possibly the only time in the 10+ years I’ve known my husband, an incident when he actually invited me to tell him, “I told you so.” I instead chose to be the bigger person and just smirked at him and shook my head in disappointment. This is what he did:

A few weeks ago my family and I packed up for an exotic animal auction in Burnsville, MN. While we didn’t come home with a camel like Rick was hoping, we did come home with a fresh batch of chickens, a handful of mouflan sheep and some peacocks, purchases which I approved — save one of the peacocks. Rick paid $80 for a freaking “pied” peacock. Yes, he’s pretty with a black and white body, but I told him that $80 peacocks are marked for death. Only $15 peacocks (or cheaper) live. That’s just how it is.

Imagine my surprise when Rick walked in the door about a week ago and said, “Go ahead, say it. ‘I told you so.’” That’s right. He found the $80 peacock dead; dead not of illness or of a rottweiler attack (common means of dispatch at our place), but dead of stupidity. Something, probably the horse, spooked the bird. He flew smack into a tin windbreak wall and broke his neck. The two other $15 peacocks we brought home are prouder than, well, you know, and alive. Survival of the fittest, I don’t think so. Survival of the cheapest.

Creepy

I created an avatar for my Twitter account today. I had previously used a photo of my pet snake Louie. I still like the snake, but was beginning to wonder if people were confused as to my gender. After all, a snake for all intents and purposes is visually gender neutral.

I went to www.faceyourmanga.com and started constructing a cartoon version of me. I must say, the experience was a little creepy. It was also a little difficult to do without a mirror. I mean, really, how should my nose look in avatar world? And how about my ears? I only had two choices for ears — rounded and pointed. Now I’m not of elvish descent (at least I don’t think I am), but my ears are indeed more pointed than they are round. But what a decision — do I go with realistic, or do I go with what I wish I looked like?

In the end, I was pretty happy with the results. I tried to stay more on the realistic side, but it was tough to do with the options they gave me. But I do think I built an avatar that’s much better looking than I am. So as far as the virtual community is concerned, I’m smokin’ hot.

Locked out

I worked late last night. I try not to do it often, but it happens. I attended a public scoping meeting in Bismarck for a programmatic environmental impact statement for wind development in the Upper Great Plains. Yes, riveting.

Needless to say, it was late and I was tired by the time I got home from picking up my daughter in Stanton and driving back home to Hannover. I left her in the car as I took an armful of junk to the house. I went to open the screen door. It didn’t move. No, no. This isn’t right. I shook the door. What the…? I pounded on the door. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” It’s 10 p.m., my daughter’s sleeping in the car, and we’re locked out of the house. OK. Don’t panic. Think. … Ah, the screen door window is open a crack. Maybe if I lay down on the deck I can get my hand far enough up in there to unlock the door… Nope. I took my jacket off. Nope. Crap.

Next plan. I grab the “stashed” set of keys. There are no stairs to the back door, but if I stand on the four-wheeler, maybe one of those keys will unlock that deadbolt…. Nope. Crap. Time for plan C. Maybe I can open that window on the screen door further. I tore the screen back, reached in and tried to slide the clips in. One moved, the other didn’t. “What the flank?! This is my life?!”

Now I’m pissed. I storm to the garage, grab a scary-looking fencing tool and truck back to the house. That cursed house. Now, I’m getting in to this house, broken window or not. I monkeyed the tool around, trying to slide the clip. … Bingo! It worked. Ooops. Maybe a little too good. The window popped out of the track. OK. Don’t panic. It didn’t break, it’ still attached, kind of. Oh, who cares. I reach in and FINALLY unlock the door. The screen’s hanging there, the window’s barely hanging on. But I did it. I almost felt like McGyver.

 KayLee doesn’t know it, but her mom is a hero.

The letter P

My daughter is smart, scarily so. She also has a sense of humor that has to be totally organic. I have no idea where she picked it up.

One day last week I was getting ready to give her a bath, but before I did, I needed to use the bathroom (yes, seems like too much information right now, but there is a point to it). She plucked bath toys from the tub, including a few foam letters and numbers that stick to the wall. I stood up and turned around to quickly flush and close the toilet lid, aware of the fact that it might seem like a cool place to throw toys. But I wasn’t quick enough. I watched from above as if it were in slow motion. As the lid was falling and the water was flushing, KayLee chucked the letter P into the toilet. *shoomp* It sucked right down the hole before I had a chance to react. She squealed with delight. I chuckled under my breath, recognizing the irony of her choice of letter. But I couldn’t chuckle out loud. Lord knows we can’t encourage this kind of thing.

I tried flushing the toilet to choke the thing down. Nope. And the water started to back up. Yikes! I tried the plunger. Water started draining, but only slowly. Well, good enough for now. I went on to give KayLee her bath. Through the craziness that is my life, I totally forgot about the incident until several days later when I tried to flush the toilet again, and got mixed results. Oh, yeah. The letter P is lodged in there, and all this time I had forgotten to tell my husband. So I delivered the news, with a chuckle. He did not think it was so funny. In fact, he informed me of the better way I could have gone about flushing the toilet so she wouldn’t have had an opportunity to throw it in. Yeah. Right. Always an answer for everything, huh, buddy? I was prepared to live with a slow-draining toilet. But now he informs me he has to take the stool off the floor & dig the thing out. Yuck. OK. Maybe this wasn’t so funny after all. Well, OK. Maybe just a little. *hee hee*

Starting over

OK. Here’s the deal. I intimidated myself out of blogging for about a month. Once I started, I all of a sudden decided that everything I post has to be a work of comedic genius. Why, I don’t know. I’ve come to realize that I have to go back to my original thought when I started — don’t care if anybody reads this. Just write what you feel like to become a better writer.

So this is the point where I start over with renewed resolve. Starting… right… now.