Well the Rockies lost in 4 game sweep. Bummer. I was really rooting for the Rockies. I like the Red Sox, but hey the Rockies are in my neck of the woods and used (maybe still do) spring train in Tucson, so we were all Rockies fans there.

On top of that I worked  all week end on Ducky’s costume – I think it’s going to be awesome. For those familiar with the Rocky Horror Picture Show she is going as Columbia. I’m not a sewing person, basically I have the machine for hemming pants and making pillow covers, basic stuff like that. I took sewing in High School, and my mom was quite a good seamstress – she made many of our clothes when we were smaller – but me, I’m just not creative in that way. Having said that, I think the work I’m doing is turning out great! I’ll snap a picture of it when we get all done.

Squirt is going as the Cheshire Cat – I can’t wait to put that together! It’s going to look great! That one is easy though — but what fun!

There will be a protected posting later. Fun stuff.

We went to a great greek restaurant this weekend – it was soooo good! Yum! I didn’t even try my favorites as they had some specials that sounded so good we decided to try those – Pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon in a brandy and mushroom sauce, with shallots and potato wedges served on sauted spinach, hubby got the kobe beef special and it was just as delicious. Definitely a “date” night restaurant though. Then we went to see Gone Baby Gone a new film directed by Ben Affleck and starring Casey Affleck – and here I have to admit that I love the Afflecks and their close friend Matt Damon. Something about their accent I think. Yum. Anyways the movie was excellent, albeit very deserving of the R rating. The ending was very disappointing though. I’m a happy ending kind of girl. It was a good ending, but I could have been happier! If you’ve seen it let me know what you think.  I wanted to see Good Luck Chuck, even though it got panned by the critics - I love Dane Cook and Jessica Alba has been a Fav since Dark Angel days. Maybe it will show up at that dollar theaters – that would be great!

Alright, off to grab a breakfast, shower and then get busy with the sewing! I already got my workout out of the way – one thing checked off the TO DO list! Hooray!

Question of the Day:

What was the most involved costume you’ve created? 

Topic October 2007 2 of 2

Tales from the Autumns of our lives

this is clearly a creative writing prompt… so create some writing for us all… this topic will run through 10/31/07, feel free to submit as many entries as you like – one or 100

It’s a personal topic about the Autumns of your life… the season, the ages; serious or silly; your writing will be appreciated here!

My first autumn

Growing up in Tucson, autumn was more something we learned about in school, rather than a real experienced season. For me, autumn meant dad closed down the pool, and that I had to put away my sandals and break out the tennis. I had to throw a flannel on top of my tank top and that the ground was now cool enough to walk on barefooted.  I had moved a lot as a child, and I saw pictures of myself surrounded by piles of yellow, brown and red leaves, but these were distant memories of young child and not really real to me. I didn’t see leaves falling. In our yard the only change was the bougevilla stopped blooming and the grass turned yellow. Truthfully though, it had been yellow for part of the summer because the water was too expensive to even keep our little pathetic patch of grass lush and green. This autumn was different however. It was special and became one of the most memorable seasons of my life.

For the first time I would experience the nip of the changing seasons. I would witness the falling of leaves, and coming preparations for winter. Hubby and I had just married. We were young, in love and far from home. He was still active duty, and during our engagement his orders to Phoenix had been “diverted” and instead he was to report to Bremerhaven Germany. Sound familiar? If you’ve seen Sound of Music, you might recognize it as the port that Col. Von Trapp is required to report to. Yes, there it is, way at the top of Germany, located right on the North Sea. This would be my first experience with world travel. Sure I had been to Mexico, but in truth, it wasn’t that much different that Nogales, AZ or for that matter, even much of Tucson.

We arrived on the 13^th of October – we left on the 12^th, I remember this because it was my hubby’s 27^th birthday. We arrived in Hamburg very early in the morning to board an Air Force bus that delivered us and other arriving troops to their various destinations. I remember the smell, stepping off the plane and walking through the airport. Clean and crisp. I remember being much colder than I had expected, after all in Tucson, we were still just wearing long sleeve shirts to adjust for the change. There however, more substantial jackets were required. I had purchased a coat in Tucson knowing that it would be much colder there. What I discovered is that coats made for Tucson, do not work for Germany. The wind cut right through my warm looking coat and chilled my skin.

One of the first orders of business was to buy us both suitable jackets. We stayed in hotel for the first couple of days. I remember taking walks down cobblestone streets, smelling the crisp air that was filled with scents from the decaying or burning leaves and damp earth. Everywhere you looked a colorful array met your eyes. Fall leaves, green and gold grass and late blooming flowers mixed with the old world charm of the city. My feeling were soaring, I was experiencing everything for the first time, from buying fresh brötchen at the corner bakery to figuring out money to ride the bus. To top that off, this new sensation of truly experiencing autumn added to the excitement. Later, winter would come, the cold would arrive and along with it difficulties we didn’t expect. But for now it was autumn, and it wasn’t the beginning of the end, it was just the beginning.

Please stop by Featured_Grownups to read other entries about Autumns!

Question of the day:

What is your favorite part of Autumn?

So one of the things we miss the most from Maui is the driving with Aloha – simply put it means driving with courtesy. Not to say that their aren’t idiots who tailgate, drive erratically while texting or talking on a cell, or those that will speed up and cut you off only to slow down. These drivers however all belong to a special club with limited members. These drivers belong to the OPAO – which you can read about HERE. For the most part though, Maui drivers tend to be polite, patient and courteous. For instance it was not uncommon for not one driver but two or three drivers to stop and let me turn across a busy street. Oncoming drivers will stop and let someone turn left in front of them – halting traffic to create an opening for the driver waiting to exit a side street or parking lot. If you turn your blinker on, someone will courteously wave you in. Merging is rarely a problem as even if one driver is a jerk, there are four or five non-jerky drivers to compensate. The accepted response to this common practice to shoot someone the shaka and carry on – you will get your chance to show your Aloha spirit later.

This is not true in any way for Albuquerque. Matter of fact we have found that by being courteous and waving people through, we just piss people off. I’ve wondered about this. I generously stop and wave someone waiting to exit a parking lot on and they get livid. They yell and gesture rudely for me to go on – as if to say “leave me alone, I’m happy waiting here forever”.  Once I was following hubby home. A guy on a bicycle was stopped by a flashing bike crossing light.

We stopped awaiting him, allowing him the crossing he requested by pushing the button that activates the flashing lights. Other motorists followed suit. Soon about 8 cars were waiting for this guy and he refused to cross. He kept shaking his head and glaring at us. No shaka, no “thanks” wave. Eventually he went, cussing us the entire way. For some time this was a mystery to me.

Why would drivers refuse the opportunity to go? Why would pedestrians get angry when you stop and wave them on? Why on earth would anyone in their right mind prefer to wait for an opening instead of accepting the kindness of others?

While my folks were here I think I answered at least one of these questions. I was discussing this with my dad and he stated when living in Tucson, he would never go, because he didn’t trust the idiots there. And this is one of those NO LIE situations – we were exiting Lowe’s while talking about this. We came to the large cris cross painted crosswalk and stopped for traffic. A mature lady in a big old boat slowed down and waved us on. I – being from Maui and used to this – started crossing. She speed up and missed hitting me by millimeters – I actually put up my hand and yelled Whoa! I was still at the beginning of the car! I practically ran to get across and she speed up again and almost clipped me as I exited the crosswalk.  Now I was irate. Why had she waved me on when she was planning to continue forward? Why bother to let me in front? Why not just go and leave me in safety?

Now I understand. I understand why people get irate when they get waved on – they are going “yeah, right you crazy person, like I’m going to give you a chance to kill me, uh huh – forget it!”. I’m wondering if the car situation is the same thing. I haven’t experienced that yet, because frankly, no one has been kind of enough, or crazy enough, to let me in traffic. I think that if someone does, I may just make an ugly face and wave them on back.

Take a wave in or wait for traffic to clear?

Whew. What a week. After the balloon fiesta my cold hit me pretty hard. It was not pretty. I rested Sunday and Monday – in between cleaning for the arrival of my folks and niece and nephew. They arrived on Tuesday – Ducky also had 2 appts. on Tuesday – one for the dentist to see if her wisdom teeth were interfering with her tubes in her ears and causing her ongoing ear issues. Nope – they’re not but they still have to be pulled. Then on to the Dr. to see what’s going on with her hand – she has this weird bump thing on the back of her hand and it’s started to interfere with writing and stuff because of the pain. Turns out it’s a ganglion cyst. Wikepedia gave pretty much a blow by blow of what the doctor said.  Although he said hers is larger than most he’s seen and therefore has a greater chance of treatment being ineffective. Great. All the treatments besides the “Bible treatment” require needles – anyone care to guess how well that went over?

Anyways, Tuesday the family arrived. Mom and dad looked tired, as I’m sure they are. The kids were so excited to be here. I wish they could just come and live with us. At any rate during the week we took mom and dad shopping for the things they need but can’t get in a small town. We took the kids to Hinkle and rode go carts, played laser tag and goofed off in the nickel arcade. Thursday mom and I took the kids to Savers and got the stuff they needed for their Halloween costumes and some new jeans and stuff. I later created my nephews costume out of stuff we had bought earlier. Hubby made niece a wand as she is Hermione this year. We also had a Hogwarts robe, a plaid skirt and a burgundy scarf for her to use. She’s ready!

Friday my folks got all packed up and headed off about 10 am.  I started packing for a scrappin’ weekend. Unfortunately it got changed from a hotel her in town to a church about 30 minutes away. It was still good, and hung out with one of my friends from Maui and met some new people. I also got 8 pages done. Not very much, but it takes me a long time to do layouts. I think I’m going to set a goal of getting 4 pages done a week. That will go along way towards getting me caught up. Got home about late and got up early and headed out for the morning session. So now I’m in scrapping mode, but I’m wiped out – so I’m off to zone out for awhile before heading to bed!

Have a great night everyone!

So last night we trundled over to Balloon Fiesta Park in the hopes to check out the special shapes glow-deo. This where they light up all the balloon after dark, while they are tethered to the ground. Supposed to be very cool, however, the wind had come up so no balloons were inflated — very disappointing. The upside was we didn’t have to pay to park, or to get in and they still had fireworks, food and booths. Along with a few colorful characters!

This morning we got up early and headed out (just hubby and I, the kids weren’t about to get up at 6:15 am on a Saturday). We had heard that the winds were going to be up today as well, but to our surprise the skies were absolutely still. As we neared the field we saw balloon after balloon rise up in the early morning light. We arrived in good time to witness the majority of the balloons go up for the mass accension — very cool. Well worth getting up for!

 I’m going to post a few of my favorite pics here, the rest are in my photo albums – under you guessed it – Balloon Fiesta. I’m also including a slide show in this entry – just to show you some of the amazing sights!

So has anyone else noticed the new little gadget after the comment boxes? The “Say it with Minis” thing. I just commented someone and noticed it. I thought what the heck let’s check this out. So I choose my little mini and then noticed it would cost me 250 credits – and that I had like 625 to start with. I decided “hey they didn’t cost me anything, why not” and hit the submit button. Right there in my comment was the little phrase and icon – along with my comment. I immediately determined I too must have the little mini gadget on my site — not for any particular reason except that I have a bad case of keeping up with the jones. I excitedly clicked my comment link to see if the xanga fairies had come in the night and left me a cool little mini thingy — and guess what? The xanga fairy is real!

After some more exploration I realized that the credits from no one have to be purchased. Like crack dealers, they give you a little sample, just enough to hopefully get you hooked, and then WHAMO – cough up $$ to play from now on. Not to say there aren’t free little widgets that you can utilize to spice up your comments, but let’s face it, the 3 or so they offer for no cost are free for a reason. No one, not even the most heavily addicted mini addict, would actually use credits for those. Luckily, I have a strong constitution and can resist such temptations. So I will use up the remaining credits I’ve been generously given (to get me hooked — mini pushers!) and then resort to  adding the ever so pathetic free mini when I really want to add something special to my comment.

Of course, now that I consider this, the fact that I went and visited and commented should be reason enough to celebrate, no one needs a cute little picture and funny phrase from me. Just my presence should suffice. Hmmmm….. I see a hole in the mini-pushers master plan….

Question of the Day:

Will you use the mini feature? And will you pay for more credits?

I should have known.

Yesterday, I cleaned the entire house. OK, well not the entire house, but the large majority of it. I vacuumed the living room, office, family room and craft room. I swept the kitchen, dining room and two hallways, I cleaned both the girls bathrooms and cleaned the kitchen twice – no three times. I also cleaned up the spare bedroom that Duckman slept in while he stayed here. Washed all the linens for that room. I also dyed two bath rugs for Squirts bathroom (they were originally white, I dyed them bright purple) and primered a new table we bought for her room so that she could paint it.

All day as I worked I kept thinking “I should sit down and take a break” or “I should se my timer and work for 15 minutes, and then take a break for 15 minutes”, but I did neither. I just kept working. This is unfortunately a MO for me. This happens whenever I start to get sick. An excellent example of this is when I was 16. My sister had recently moved out and I was going to take over her old room. It was much bigger than mine, and cooler in the summer for sure. I decided one day to make the switch, although my mom had offered to help me on the weekend, I for some reason just couldn’t wait. I cleaned both rooms, vacuumed and dusted and then began moving the furniture. Her leftovers out and mine in. I finally collapsed on the bare mattress after getting the last of the furniture in and in place. My mom found me there when she got home. I had a temp of 104.0 – Course my mom was pissed. A trip to the dr. the next day informed me I had severe tonsillitis. 

What I’ve found out is that when I work like that when I’m getting sick, I get much sicker because I wear myself out and weaken myself rather than give myself a chance to recuperate. Early on in our marriage hubby also discovered this. He’d come home to find the house immaculate – I mean baseboards cleaned, windows cleaned, walls wiped – the works. He got to the point where he would come home to this and ask “Are you sick?”. To which I usually replied “NO!” all offended only to get up the next morning with a fever, throwing up or something equally horrible. Over the last 5 years or so I’ve learned to recognize this and overcome it. But I had a serious relapse yesterday. When I finally quit for the day around 5:00 pm, I plopped down in the chair and grabbed the remote. A few minutes later I realized I was feeling poorly. My head was achy, my throat was sore and my nose was stuffy. Crap. I’d done it again.

When will I ever learn?

Sigh.

I’m on the couch with a blanket and the remote. Trying to rest up as the girls and I need to go birthday shopping for Hubby today -as his birthday is tomorrow. We are going to try to go to the balloon fiesta tomorrow, and possibly Saturday morning. Hopefully I’ll have some good pictures to share later. Right now I’m going to go visit everyone. 

Question of the day:

How do you deal with getting sick?

Not much going on around here. I seem to have fallen into some sort of fall “I don’t feel like do anything” conundrum. Can’t pinpoint why. I think I’m just bored. Next week when Duckman leaves I think I will go out and try to get a job, even if it’s not teaching. I’m tired of playing by myself all day. On second thought, I just thought of a bunch of stuff I could do around here to keep busy. Now that I have apparently diagnosed my problem, I feel much better already.

Tonight we celebrate Duckman’s BD. Tomorrow we leave for Silver. I was trying to figure out a way to attend Liz’s funeral, but the kids want to come back on Sunday evening and the funeral is Monday morning. We could take two cars, but that seems wasteful and I hesitate to let Ducky drive her, Duckman and Squirt home alone. Although Hubby says he has no problem with it, I’m just a nervous nellie I guess.

We are going back to the family fun center tonight, we’ll play a round of laser tag and enjoy some arcade games. Then come home for dinner – Ducky and Duckman are making a risotto dish and following it up with a dump cake for his BD.

Seriously, very little is going on in my life. Boring, but in a good way. It’s a good thing my shows are back on, I was going crazy. Although it’s sad that DiNozzio lost his love (NCIS) and I can’t believe Gideon is leaving Criminal Minds – don’t know I’ll continue without him — I’ve loved Mandy Patinkin since his days as a swordsman in the Princess Bride.

I’m kind of liking Survivors return to the original flavor of the show, although is anyone else ready to smack Jean-Robert? He thinks he’s SOOOO smart — outwitting them all with his stealth. I think he’s about to get his butt thrown off for being a lazy a**….but hey that’s just me.

Also can’t wait to see how Grissom and Sara are doing now that their relationship is “out”! We also started watching Heroes – which we are liking, and Journeyman and Chuck – which is downright hysterical.

I had some funnies to post, but I can’t find them now and don’t feel like looking. Maybe I’ll find them later. Maybe.

*edit*

I was reading this over again and saw all the mistakes, I wrote it kind of in a hurry – pathetic!  LOL – Oh well. Lazer tag was a blast!! So much fun – we are definitely going to have to make that a regular adventure!

Survivor – they voted off Leslie??? What the heck is wrong with them, they had an opportunity to get rid of Jean-Robert and they blew it! Argh.

So movie night was a great hit. All of Ducky’s friends had fun and many left with new colored hair – purple, purple tips and green streaks. It was one of those situations where 1 friend had it planned and the others just jumped on the band wagon. I was nervous, asking whether or not parents had knowledge and would approve – I was sure that these girls would never be allowed over my house again. However, Ducky assured me that all the parents were A-OK with it — WHEW!!

Squirt’s birthday went very nice – we fixed her favorite dinner items – BBQ Brisket, grilled corn-on-the-cob, and baked potatoes. To finish it off we had a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cake — oh my gosh!!! So good! We had Chocolate Fudge and Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream with cake and waffle cone crust covered in a dark chocolate layer with M&M flowers on it. YUM!! LOVED that. She was very happy with her presents. She got a new iPod nano, a CD, 2 books, a new set of white converse with fabric markers (to decorate them) and money and a gift card.

Tonight we are taking her and some friends putt-putt golfing. They will also make a cake. Kind of a tradition around here – the kids make the cake themselves and decorate it with their friends. One year Ducky and her friends broke up into teams and had a race to see who’s team could get their layer mixed, baked and iced first. There was frosting everywhere. At any rate they all enjoy the process and have fun, the cakes are quite interesting to look at some times. I think we will also have burgers and hot dogs — easy and inexpensive.Besides I already have chips and dips!

Tomorrow we are celebrating Peter’s Birthday – his Birthday is the day after he leaves, but we won’t have time before then since we are going to Silver this week end and Monday night (his last night here) Ducky and Duckman want to go out by themselves. Very sadly, my mother’s good friend and neighbor passed on yesterday. She’s been quite ill, fell several times and had quit eating. She was 93. She was an amazing lady, but she didn’t want to live in a nursing home, she wanted to die in her “little house” as she called it. She was a musician that actually played piano / organ at the silent movies to accompany the story. She really was very interesting. She will be missed. At the same time, she was soooo unhappy in the nursing home. She just wanted to go home. She was in a lot of pain from her falls, and she was down to nothing because she couldn’t swallow, so eating was difficult. It wasn’t good. Before she went to the nursing home, she was in a rehabilitation hospital, and I took a great picture of her with my mom. I think for Christmas, I’m going to paint that portrait for my mom. I think she would like that.

Hubby’s birthday is also coming up. Jeesh. I need a birthday break. Also Alice Cooper is coming the day before Halloween. But, Trans-Siberian Orchestra tickets for December just went on sale and personally I would rather do that. If I have to choose, that’s my choice!

Well I have to go get cake mixes and burger stuff. Hope everyone has a great day!