I say it like I know what it means... It seemed fitting at the time....

So why is it that in the morning when I get dressed in my tie dye screaming green and brown flowery new dress that I feel like a million bucks, but come 3pm, I feel shlepy, short and fat?! ITS THE VERY SAME OUTFIT!!! Same shoes...same everything!

Why are brains so broken?

Picture for a moment....Under the sink with one of those magnetic bouncy ball type LED lights pointing a tiny beam of hope towards the shut off valve. Im surrounded by cobb webs and wrenches and my fluffy cat is quite determined in trying to SHOVE himself in any free space left under the sink with me. His ploofy tail that was just unintentionally used as a cobweb cleaner is flopping me in the face as I strategically have the wrenches in the sweet spot and using all my force to tighten the secondary nut closer to to the faucet guts when it happens...

..my grip of the gods slipped and wacked the shut off valve JUST ENOUGH to open it up and send water skyrocketing up the whole 8 inches of free space and bouncing off the bottom of the sink and right into my face. The cat BOLTS out from under the sink as I try to gracefully slink myself out from under the cabinet and grabbing the valve at the same time to squeeze it closed.

I spent the next 10 mins just laying on the floor surrounded by the innards of the 'under the sink' cabinet starring at the ceiling with a giant grin on my face.

I love home ownership.

The guy in front of me in line is on a first name basis with everyone behind the counter. Im late for work and all I want it a cup of yummy hot gloppy oatmeal and a tea to go. Yes, all these things can be found in my file cabinet drawer, but it really does taste better when someone else makes it and hands it to you with a smile. The social butterfly in front of me is also recharging his frequent flyer card. There is a black woman standing in front of the 'help yourself' counter that has been smeared and sprinkled with the remains of the early morning commuters coffee crowd. She has fantastic hair! She is a bit taller than me and slender with tea colored skin and this amazing hair that has been styled like a cotton ball to frame her freckled cheekbones. Perhaps she is in her late 40's.
The talker in front of me grabs all his various receipts and cards and moves the hell out of the way. I place my simple order and get 3 questions back regarding the specifics of my order. I reply with a smile and pay and move the hell out of the way for the next person in line. I slink over to the black woman and lean in with a quiet whisper and let her know how gorgeous her hair is. She blushes, giggles and pets her hair for a couple strokes before leaning in to me and with a slight accent I cant place to save my life, she explains how she hasn't washed it and is on her way to the airport to head to the UN. She asks if she looks ok, because she didnt know what she should wear. She showed me a pile of paperwork in her bag and talked about her passport. I reassure her she looks lovely and I hear my name is called to claim my drink. I squeeze through the much larger now crowd and claim my prize. Back at the counter I begin to fill my tea with the regular additives and she comes over with her drink and goes on to explain how she even had to write a biography of herself and she was worried because she only wrote a paragraph, but she learned that morning that someone else had written two pages! I reassured her that the most important things should be able to be summed up in a paragraph and if it takes two pages, you're doing it wrong. She put her hand on my shoulder and laughed the sweetest softest laugh Ive ever heard. I wanted to ask her to sit and tell me about her big meeting, but we both had to run. It was drizzling and the traffic wasnt getting any lighter. We both had important places to be...some of us more important than others.
I hope she did well. ...whatever she was there for.

Anyone else have their cat on Prozac? The vet put my parents cat on a small dose for his peeing problem. I gave him his first dose last nite and she said we should start to see a difference in a couple weeks.

Yes, thats right I said it.. sheets. As in bed linens. My favorite part of Sunday is Changing The Sheets Night.

Ive found myself in a pickle lately because its nearly impossible to find that particular texture of sheets that I love. The only way I can explain is... Grandma's sheets. I LOVE GRANDMA's SHEETS! Ive tried many version of cotton and still have a hard time finding the right kind. You know, soft, thin-like, worn in. Most sheets these days are rough or thick with a terrible thread count, or they have a high thread count that makes them feel slimy. Every Sunday I change my sheets and I crawl into the cabinet trying to find something that feels right for a hot summer sticky night. And I always go back to this one set I inherited with the house. I think they might have even been Aunty Judy's. The elastic corners are all stretched out, the floral pattern is faded and pastely and they barely fit on my new fangled high tech queen sized foam mattress, but I love them and wrestle them all with all my might and almost always break a nail! They always hold that new sheets smell and feel fantastic as a cover in the summer heat at night. I wish I had the smarts to save all the sheets from Judy's house when we cleaned. Martha Stewart sheets come close, but at $60 on Sale its hard to rationalize. I tried to make out the ingredients, to see if it was a cotton/poly blend or just 100% cotton, but the remains of the stamped letters are minimal.

So if you have any bed linens from your grandparents or hand-me-downs from your inlaws or parents- CALL ME UP.

I have a problem. A problem with sheets.

Blind date tonight at Kimballs. This is my public announcement in case he turns out to be an axe murderer - look for my body behind the chicken and goat barn.

That's all.

So apparently by posting a thing titled Operation Anything, people are led to believe its some super duper project they want to be part of. I posted to Facebook today 'Operation Love Your Legs is in effect'. This was a play on words simply to mean Dammit, Im going to wear shorts and skirts until I love it because no one should hate their legs as much as I hate my legs. Its just unhealthy! But in order to change that embarrassed knee jerk reaction, I must embrace it. I must come to work and go to social gatherings in a piece of clothing that are NOT jeans. I figure the more I do it, the less mortified I will be with them being exposed. Its a genetic flaw. I cant seem to change it, so I might as well LOVE it or no one else will!

After I posted, everyone was responding Good job! Your Brave! Where do I sign up for this?!

Sign up? No,,,,its not a Thing, Im just ...wearing a dress. Another coworker came in and said, so whats this Operation thing you are part of? Its not a Thing, Im just...Im xposing my legs cuz I hate them. Where do I sign up? No no...is just... GAH never mind.

So... Im wearing skirts and dresses for the next couple weeks and we will see if it helps.

:p

When I moved into Aunty Sues house, I knew the wicker furniture wouldnt stay. It was going to a relative in Kentucky. It took up the entire front porch and two pieces sat in the back porch since the house was built in 1947. Probably in the exact layout too. I was sad to see it go, just because it had always been there and gave the house a cozy feel. I had no idea what I would replace it with.

Dads sister, Aunt Jeanie is consolidating houses to move her primary residence to Barnstead/Winnepasauki. This means she has two houses worth of crap she needs to consolidate into one. They both worked and had no kids, so needless to say, she has a lot of crap. I told her I would take anything Christmas related, so she has been boxing things up and dropping them off randomly at my house.

I was home sick Thursday with a terrible migraine and she happen to stop by with three more boxes of xmas. She mentioned she has a guy coming this week to look to buy anything else in the house (living room furniture, kitchen stuff, wall hangings, etc.) so if I wanted anything to come by. She had mentioned on her way out, how nice the wicker furniture was on the porch and I explained it was going to a relative in Kentucky the next day. She asked what was going to go on the porch in its place, to which I responded - I have no idea. She asked if I wanted her old patio set from 'up country'.

I squealed like a little girl...really loudly. I have been searching for a chaise under $50 and have only come up with CRAP. This patio set isn't extraordinary by any means, but its got memories and that makes it priceless.

Its painted a high gloss rust color and historically had that heavy duty plastic woven cushions on it that your thighs would stick to on hot, humid days. This set was always on her back screened in porch since they bought the house Up Country. Every summer, every holiday and birthday we would pack up the tan mini van and head to her house for the long weekend. The smell of damp, wood stove infusing everything we brought with us. After ice skating, swimming or hiking, we would come back to the screened in porch, usually STARVING and sit on that furniture until the sandwiches were ready. As we got older and in our moody teenage years, we would fight with dad over who would be able to nap on the extra squishy chaise under the fresh air of the wooded canopy. As we got older, my sisters and I would try and play cards on our own on the floor covered in AstroTurf - only to give up on the scratchy floor and move the giant bowl of plain potato chips from the table in between and sit in the overstuffed patio chairs. The arms were wide enough to hold our store brand soda - which we only go up there on holidays and weekends.

Once they sold the Alton Bay house and moved to the Barnstead house, it wasnt the same. It was on a lake in a residential section, not in the woods by the bigger country-esque lake. The new house has septic and the ability to shower, which takes away from the 'cabin' feel, but in my adult years, I totally need that. :) As we got older, of course, we stopped visiting and settled into our adult years. I hope to visit more this summer - I keep saying that, but a nice moto trip up there for the weekend would be spectacular.

Anyways, to know Im going to get the patio furniture fills me up with so much warmth, I cant contain myself. Its like finding a long lost toy from your childhood. All the memories come flooding back and remind me how lucky I was as a kid to have those experiences. As much as we all hated leaving our friends behind for fun filled summer days, the cross country skiing and snow mobiling and ice skating and shopping and the family fights totally made up for it.

So, any time you come over and we have a bbq and eat and drink and nap on the back porch and your legs stick to the plasticy seat cushions, you will know just how important that little patio set is to me.

Home ownership has taken its toll on my nerves. Anyone that knows me, knows I have...bug...issues. I squeal like a 12 year old girl and cannot handle it. I will jump on top of the closest piece of furniture. Its totally illogical -hence PHOBIA.

So I knew the house came with carpenter ants. This was an ongoing battle Aunty Sue had. She refused to pay for an exterminator, so I would spray and trap. This spring, I knew they would be coming so I got spray for around the foundation and I got these new poison traps, that were clear trays filled with honey looking poison. After some increase in activity, I havent seen one in the kitchen in a good month! Excellent. This stuff is WELL worth the expensive price (4 trays for $12).

The last few days, Ive been finding 'sugar' ants in the upstairs bathroom on the window sill. Those teeny tiny ants you find on the sidewalk. One here... one there. Not too bad, but clearly they are coming from somewhere. I thought the laundry shoot. So I go downstairs where I have the bait still out as a precaution and I bring one upstairs and place it on the window sill thinking maybe this stuff will work on the little guys as well as the big ones.

An hour or so later I go upstairs to check it out and like out of a disney cartoon, there is a line of tiny ants from the window sill molding strait to the bait. It was fascinating to watch how organized the extraction of the bait was. I say ok, good to know thats where they are coming from. Ill let them drink some more and bring it back to the hive to poison the queen (if it works the same way as carpenter ants). Then Ill caulk that spot closed.

An hour or so after that I get ready for bed and decide to check in on the progress cuz it was totally fascinating and organized..... and HOLY CHRIST ITS LIKE WOODSTOCK ON THE WINDOWSILL!!! Mass confusion, ants crawling all over themselves and the bait trap is COVERED LIKE A SPOILED APPLE LEFT ON THE SIDEWALK ON A HOT SUMMER DAY! OMFG WHAT DO I DO!!!

My instincts want to put on rubber gloves and grab the covered trap and seal it in a ziplock bag to be set on fire and thrown outside!!!! But no...a strangers calm voice inside of me says Kuprevich - its supposed to get more traffic and do its job and then they will go away. The queen is sending her best soldiers to get the food and they will bring it back and she will die a slow painful death, so that her babies babies will be terrified to ever come out of the walls into MY HOUSE! Just... walk away.

WALK AWAY!!!?!!!

Yes, walk away... let it do its job.

BUT BUT.. OMG ITS SOO GROSSS!!!!

Yes... let it be. A thousand dead ants beat a few hundred.

Fine.

I turn off the light and crawl into bed.

Where I find a lost, roaming tick looking for a host.

EDDIE OFF THE BED OMG!!!!!! I fly out of bed with the grace of an aerialist lot taking my eye off the tick with fear I would lose his positioning. I leap over the laundry basket and grab a tissue from the bureau and SNAG HIM OFF MY DAMN BED!

Into the bathroom I go to flush him, trying to NOT focus on the heap of ants on the window sill by the toilet. I flush the fucker and proceed to strip my bed of sheets and bedding wishing to GOD I had a washing machine where I could just instantly wash these things, but NO. I have to put them in a trash bag and out on the porch where I know they cant come in and get me -until I can bring the laundry to moms to be washed in scaling hot water.

I make the bed, cautiously crawl under the covers and spend the next hour trying to fall asleep and not think about the piles of ants and legions of ticks trying to invade my house.