I found myself at Smith’s yesterday evening. Arming up for an evening spent with screaming, laughing and rowdy teens. My girls had their first sleep over last night. Two girls we met through our new church. They are 17 and15 – they slide right between my girls like a glove slides on a hand. They are also homeschoolers, so there are some commonalities, even though my girls don’t homeschool any more they can certainly relate!

The weapons of choice for one of these shindigs is of course primarily made of chocolate. We also got chips and dip, soda, strawberries and blueberries and whip cream. Pretty much enough sugar to make sure that everyone was awake far into the night. Which, as you may know from my past blogs, is just fine with me. I love having the kids in my house, even if I have to sell a kidney to feed them. That way I know my kids friends, I know what they are doing, and where they are. I’m willing to pay the price of the trashed house and outrageous food bill. It makes sense to me. Of course two teen girls is a far cry from the 8 – 10 teens that were mostly boys that used to invade my house on a regular basis, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

Ducky has already meet via the internet some kids that go to her school. She wants to go to a concert where many of them will be later this month. Since we don’t know any of these kids, and Ducky doesn’t know them herself, we are leery of that to say the very least! We’ll see, we don’t want her going alone, but we don’t want her going with strangers either! A lot can happen by then as they start school next week. It’s a wait and see kind of situation.

On the bright side, I got my scrapbooking area set up! Woo hoo! Now all I need to do is find my scrapbooks. (yikes). Since this new house has two living areas and two dining areas, we took the front living/dining area and turned it into a game/craft room. We still need a futon to put in there, but that will have to wait till somebody gets a job. I wish I could afford to do a home theater – but that will have to wait till the next house.

Well I’m off to polish up my resume and put in some job applications.  Hopefully I’ll have a job soon and can start shopping for real again.

Question of the day:

Favorite snack food?

 OK – so I finally have time for some of these great challenges that have been passing me by.

Here’s the last from the Kween_of_the_Queens:

***ESCAPE***

I want you to plan your escape.  Escape from whatever it is that’s troubling you right at this very instant!  Work worries?  Escape them!  Relationship worries?  Leave them behind!  Responsibilities weighing you down?  Toss your worries to the 4 winds!

Plan your escape, give details. . .they why, the where, the how.  Would you take anyone with you?  Who?

I’m not talking about a “vacation”, I’m talking about a way out of any worrisome, stressful or emotionally charged situation.  Would you steal away in the middle of the night or leave a note?  Neither?  Both?

Plan your escape Royal Subjects. . . .

Let’s ESCAPE!

No boundaries, no limits, just sweet escape!

Can you do it?  Is it in you?

You have until August 15 to complete your challenge.

Remember to go to as many sites as possible!  Use the **STAR** system!!!  Oh, and STAR THIS ENTRY TOO!!!!!

This is actually a tough one for me. Being raised Catholic I am the number one person capable of making myself feel crappy for shirking my responsibilities or letting someone down. This has led to a whole slew of bad situations for me. So do I truly have it in me? To ESCAPE? To run away and free myself from what ever situation is burdening me. Um, probably not. I could do, if I was forced to, but I would be up to my eyeballs in self-recriminations and lets face it, that just wouldn’t be worth it. I’d have to escape from my escape. I’m a lousy free spirit, I KNOW!

But, if I could do it heres how it would have to go:

As for what I was escaping from – well let’s see, no job, new state, new house, unpacking, bills, credential hassles and life in general. I guess that is enough to want to run away from.

I would need a large supply of cash – or readily accessible money. While living on the beach or in the woods is nice, I like a hot shower and soft bed.  (I’m spoiled like that).

I would need a current passport.

I would buy an airline ticket (first class – hey if I’m running what the heck). I would take off on a night flight, that way hopefully all the screaming babies would be asleep and I could watch the movie and relish in my freedom.

I would start with Germany, the only reason for this is that it is somewhat familiar since we lived there for 3 years. 

In Germany I would buy a EuroRail pass and set off.

Stopping whenever the whim struck, staying in little B&Bs all across Europe. I would see all the things that I had been planning to see in my staid and boring life, but never got around to. I would travel and learn from the history, the people, the places.

Working as needed and taking as many pictures as I could.

As for who would go with me, My hubby could go, if he paid his own way, and I’d take the girls if they were willing to enjoy the experience and not argue. There is a lot there to see, I would not stop until all the boxes had been checked off.

Anyone else who wants to join us is welcome.

What do you say?

“Come with me and escape”!

Now… off with you to the Kween_of_the Queens website to read other daring escapes.

Question of the day:

Where do you go to escape?

So we have been working our tushies off here – OK, well my tushie is unfortunately entirely intact, but you get the idea. So yesterday we pushed the EASY button. Hubby spent the day golfing. Squirt and I took up residence on the couch for some serious couch potato sessions. Ducky took advantage of this hiatus in work to perform her teenage duties and sleep until 2:30.

That evening hubby and I were talking on the couch – he is definitely feeling the stress. He offically retires 1 September and has no job. Neither do I in fact. This is quite troublesome, but I am not worried. Why? Because I’m sure I could have a job by the end of the week, it just wouldn’t neccessarily be what I wanted. It would however, pay the bills and I would take that. Hubby has job prospects, good ones that he is interested in, but they are not open until November and later. As we were talking Ducky came downstairs – she’s having problems with the long term relationship her and Duckman have. I’m sure her end will get better once school starts, but it’s tough. She feels alone and abandoned. Can’t say I blame her. 16 is a super crappy time to have to move across the country.

We decided we need some family time and spent several hours playing Fluxx — which has become one of our favorite games. Another addition to favorite games is In a Pickle – another word association game, similar to Apples to Apples but even more amusing if possible. We ended our night with a dessert of Dump Cake and we all felt much better after some laughter and fun.

Today we headed off to the movies. We rarely see the same movie anymore, we just all go at the same time. Hubby and I saw Bourne Ultimatium – which like the previous Bourne movies was excellent. The only thing I disliked was the quick camera pans, which makes it hard to focus and see all the action. Ducky saw No Reservations – which she claimed was just what she need a good chick flick. Squirt went for a second viewing of HP5 – and admittedly I would have willing gone for a second view myself, but Bourne (and Matt Damon) were calling to me.

It is so nice to have so many movie choices and such great theaters to attend. The ones on Maui leave a lot to be desired. This one even had an ice cream stand and coffee bar for goodness sakes. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

We are off to church in a few, then tomorrow it’s back to the boxes and the job hunting. Wish us luck.

What’s the last movie you saw or what movie is out that you are dying to see?

Before my exit into the great empty void, I mentioned that I was flying to CA to take some test required to renew my CA teacher Credential. While I was there I visited one of my best friends who coincidentally shares my name! One of my other dear friends shares my middle name, which is the mane I go by all the time – Annette. My hubby calls my friend in CA Annette² aka “Double Trouble”.

She is one of those amazing betty crocker people that I envy and admire and slightly fear. Annette and her husband raise buffalo, have an orchard, vineyard  and vegetable garden. She trains horses and they have dogs the size of small ponies. Did I mention that while I bottle feed an abandoned kitten, she is bottle feeding a calf and a baby buffalo (not and easy thing to do). She cooks everything from scratch, and never thinks anything of it. She’ll make a cheesecake and then casually ask if you want caramel with that and if you say yes she says “I’ll just whip some up”. Uh huh. Sure. Whip me up some caramel. I didn’t even  know you could MAKE caramel. I thought it had to be purchased from a grocery store in those annoying little wrapped cubes that take forever to peel. But why don’t you just go whip me up some! What the heck are the ingredients for caramel anyway?

At any rate, we had a blast (and I ate extremely well). We shopped, laughed, feed cows, horses and dogs. During one shopping expedition we took her two adorable girls with us. They are 12 and 9. They wanted to go so badly, we had been out the day before and they had complained and whined about us not taking them. So we had a girls day out. After a couple of stores we grew tired of the girls constant whining and complaining. So we started giving them grief and harassing them about it. Well we had more stops than we had planned. After just a couple stores in the mall the girls were complaining about being tired and having tired and sore feet. We told them to hang tough and be good shoppers. By the end of our shopping spree – we were both hurting but we were on a mission. As we left our final store I whispered to Annette how badly my feet were hurting and I was glad we were finally done. She whispered back that her knee was killing her but she was  bound and determined not to let her girls see that we were sore and shopped out too. After all, they had finally stopped complaining and were being little tired and sore troopers! I think we all slept good that night, after a  delicious home made dinner of course!

Question of the day:

Have you ever shopped till you dropped?

It’s true. I am alive and doing well. I’m also back from the void of no internet connection. We moved out of the hotel a week early. We went to hubby’s sister’s house to celebrate all the July birthdays. My birthday, Ducky’s Sweet 16 birthday and hubby’s mom turned 70. We had a great time although we were cramped and the animals were unhappy. The kitties had to stay locked up in our little bedroom as Sister In Laws dog is a cat chaser. Although Merry did teach him a thing or two about how rude she thought that was!

Ducky got a pink Dell laptop, an iHome, some knee high cons (which are still in transit), a great skirt from a celtic festival, a beading machine and other misc. goodies.

We all pitched in and got Mamaw a new laptop too, so she can spend her retirement writing her memoirs. She has great stories to tell and we are glad she’s recording them for prosperity. Like she was a police dispatcher in Dallas Texas. Although she was off when JFK was shot, she was the one who took the call about Lee Harvey Oswald. Very cool stuff like that. Also a book with “Jim-isms” — stories and phrases that her husband – a truly great man – used to tell and say. She was soooo excited! She squealed like a little girl! It was so cute!

Afterwards we headed to our new home. We got the keys to the empty and clean house on Saturday – so we started “camping out”. It was awesome to have such great space and the animals were having a blast with all the empty spaces! Our furniture came on Monday, can cable was supposed to be hooked yesterday, but that was one ordeal after another. We have a temporary fix so I thought I would update and let everyone know that I am BACK! Hooray! I’m off to visit everyone and catch up. I love my broadband!