Helping The Band

Mar 262012
 

Did you remember to mark your calendars?

That’s right, the auction has started over at Band Back Together, and boy do they sure have a lot of neat things up for bid!  They’ve got clothes, jewelry, artwork… and a Kindle!  (I even donated 2 of my necklaces.)  The starting prices for everything are way affordable, so get on over there and join in the fun.

If you’re not familiar with this site, here’s your greeting (taken from their home page):

Welcome to Band Back Together, a community weblog open to all, created by Aunt Becky from Mommy Wants Vodka.

Who are we? We’re The Band.

We’re a band of survivors. We’re here to put a face to everything once kept in the dark. We’re here to show the world that you can go through hell and come out the other side.

So, pull up that old tattered leather chair and make yourself a drink. Pull your skeletons from their closet and make them dance the tango. Alone, we are small. Together, we are mighty.

We are all connected.

We are none of us alone.

Share your story.

It’s time to get the Band Back Together.

If you can support only one organization this year, please consider this one.  The resources that they provide and encouragement that is given by others is priceless.  And if you just don’t have those few extra bucks, pass the word around about this event (Facebook, twitter, email!).

You’ve got until midnight on April 2nd, so let’s help them reach their goal!

 

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Who’s REALLY In Charge

Mar 232012
 

It’s been an exhausting day, and all you’ve been thinking about since you got home is curling up under the blankets and going to sleep.

And now the time has finally arrived.  You slip under the covers, cuddle into your favorite sleeping position and drift off.

Your dream takes you to that Caribbean island that you’ve always escaped to when the world around you is just too much to handle.  The sun’s rays warm your skin as you listen to the waves gently crash upon the beach.

The local cabana boy with his bronze skin offers to gently message the suntan lotion on your back and you feel all the tension in your body slowly slip away.

But suddenly, a soft noise comes from behind you that sounds as if he’s choking.  You turn around to see him on his hands and knees;  something has caught in his throat and he can’t seem to get it out.  His back rises and falls in violent waves as an all-too familiar sound is emitted from his lips:

hork… hork…

You’re immediately torn away from your dream and open your eyes and listen to the sound from somewhere in the night:  hork… hork…  Lovely.  The cat is coughing up a furball and you can’t see where she is.  But you are tired, and roll over figuring that the mess can wait until morning.

But your bladder has become alerted to the fact that you are conscious and has decided that a trip to the bathroom is in order.  You try to reason with your bladder that there is a landmine in the general vicinity and in order to navigate to the porcelain goddess, you’d have to turn on the light and that would really throw off your sleeping pattern.  But it doesn’t care, because it wants to go NOW!

You carefully slide out of bed, silently praying that you don’t step on the gift your feline friend has left for you as you make your way to the light switch.  You gaze around the room with your sleep filled eyes and see… nothing.  Rather than do a thorough sweep of the house, you go about your business and slide back into bed, vowing to search for the offending mess in the morning.

But you forget about it when you rise for the day and life goes on as normal.  Days later as you are vacuuming the living room, you discover a dark patch on the hardwood floor.  Kneeling down to get a closer look, you suddenly remember the event of so many nights ago.  What would have taken 2 minutes to clean up in it’s liquid state has now turned into cement and will require 10 minutes of scraping and scrubbing to remove.

Welcome to the wonderful world of cat ownership.  Only you are the one that is owned, not the other way around.

 

And Yes, I Kept The Tooth

Mar 222012
 

The day was finally here.  TTFH was finally going bye bye.

Although I was a little nervous (normal), I new the Prince of All Dentists would make everything all better.  He had a gentle hand and demeanor and was on a mission to eradicate that rotten tooth swiftly.  But first, he had to pull out the medieval torture device that everyone who has gone to the dentist office is familiar with:

Whenever I see this thing come near my mouth, my eyes get as big as saucers, every muscle in my body tenses up, and my blood pressure goes through the roof.  I just know that first jab is going to hurt like hell, and unfortunately it won’t take just a few shots from this baby.

My body sees novocian as nothing more than Baby Anbesol – it drinks it in, swallows it down and treats it like water.  So in order to properly numb me up, I have to have enough to knock out a horse, which soon became obviously clear to the Prince of All Dentists.

With the patience of a Saint, he kept coming back and testing the effect all the shots were having on me.  When my tongue finally felt like it was made of cement and my lip drooping down to my chin, he gave a couple more quick shots and was ready for battle.

Now, if the needle wasn’t enough to make me shake in my boots, the wrench-like devise that slowly moved toward my mouth about did me in.  I’m not a newbie when it comes to seeing all this equipment, but I’ll never ever be calm about it.  I’ve been through extractions before where I can feel the roots coming loose from my jaw;  teeth breaking apart as they get pulled out; and I’ve even had a dentist put his weight on me trying to wrestle one out of my mouth.  Needless to say, I had reason for being nervous.

But I shouldn’t have been.  After all, the Prince was a pro and in 5 seconds he had that rotten molar out of my mouth.  And I didn’t even feel it.  I wanted to hug the man.

So now I get to take the next couple of days healing and eating mashed bananas and tomato soup, because those are the only soft foods I have in the house since I didn’t think about all this when I went grocery shopping on Monday.

Way to plan, Sandy.

 

The Not-So-Magnificent Post

Mar 202012
 

Well, today’s post didn’t exactly work out like I’d planned.

I wanted to regale you with how happy I was to have received my plant seeds in the mail and how I got to use one of Rick’s power tools to drill holes into all of the cans I was saving to start my seeds in.

It was going to be magnificent, I tell ya.

Instead, I am using my laptop to write this because I’m running some super duper software on my main computer because I have a nasty virus on it.

And that is the computer where I store all my pictures, including the ones that I was going to use for my magnificent post.  (Pictures = excitement!)

So instead, I will just wish you a Happy First Day of Spring.

With a picture*, of course.

 

*Courtesy of (notmyfriend) Google

 

Rambo I Am Not

Mar 192012
 

In my neck of the woods (pun intended) the best way to know what is going on is to have a scanner.

At least once a week I’ll have someone ask me “Did you here what happened to so-and-so?  I heard it on the scanner.”  There will also be the occasional Facebook post asking if anyone knows what’s going on with the sirens going up and down Blvd (the main street in our community), and someone will pipe up about what they heard on the scanner.

As you may have guessed, we have not one, but two scanners.  Rick keeps one at his shop and he bought another one for us to have at home.  For some reason, this little device is a window of the world that he needs to be tuned into to see what crazy shit is going on around us.  Of course, you don’t always get all the details of who/what/where/why, but sometimes it can be entertaining, kind of like listening to an old radio program.

And I can see his concern, especially when we woke up on New Year’s morning to find squad cars and police canvasing the area around our house looking for some punks that robbed 7 houses in the neighborhood the night before.

This also brings up the topic of guns (which I hate).  Rick bought one at an auction last summer and I’ve basically ignored the stupid thing.  But apparently one gun wasn’t good enough and unbeknownst to me he went and bought a hand gun.  His reasoning:  so I would have something to use if some scallywags came on the property I could defend myself.

Bwahahahahah!  Yeah, right.

Anywho, about a month ago Rick called me from his shop and asked if I had the scanner on.  Ummm… no, I told him, should I?  Apparently 2 squad cars had just gone past the store with sirens wailing and heading straight for our community.  The  next hour was spent listening to the banter of police officers trying to locate a person who might have had a gun who was a few blocks away from our house.  This did not sit well with Rick because he wasn’t home to protect me in case this possible gun toting person decided to venture up our street.

But he reminded me where the hand gun was in case I needed it.  And also, there was one bullet in it.  ONE.  But it wasn’t in the chamber.  So in order to fire the stupid thing I would have to do this, that and the other thing in order to shoot the one bullet.

Suddenly everything changed and I realized my life had turned into a sitcom.  And I was Barney Fife.

 

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