Wednesday, March 21, 2012

While I was on hold this happened...

My mantra for the day is be strong and think positively.  As I was pushing the yard waste bin through the over-growness that is our back yard this afternoon, the aforementioned bin tipped and sent me flying in to the swamp that is the decorative frog spawning pond mentioned some time ago whilst the grandchildren were visiting and shaking us down for money.  I was strong enough to save the iPhone from a drowning and I'm positive I won't be doing any more gardening during the last few pathetic years I have left.  So there you have it.  Happy days.  I might mention that the pond is full of nasty little frog stuff and a great deal of lawn debris courtesy of an abhorrence to gardening on my part and complete and total indifference on the part of the spouse.  I am also positive that I will have a word with the spouse. 

What else  has happened?  The youngest daughter asked me to baby sit her three offspring.   Being a wise mother she did not tell the little darlings who was coming up to visit and in no way warned them that she and her beloved were scampering off for a night of debauchery on St. Paddy's day.  Once the parents made good their escape, little Mila, who only the other day thought I was the very best g'mother in the world (and she would have been correct) while I was squiring her around the zoo, now determined I was the epitome of all that is evil and wrapped herself up in the canopy over her little bed and refused to acknowledge my existence, nay screamed bloody murder at the sight of my visage.  I wisely took refuge in the living room, winced at the sound of the door slamming behind me and the boys and I entertained ourselves with a couple movies, Rio and How to Train Your Dragon if you must know.  I made one more attempt at winning her over that resulted in her squiggling out of my loving embrace and propelling her little unpleasant self back to the sanctity of her dungeon  room, slamming the door once again.  I can take a hint.  I am not a good sitter, but the children amuse me nonetheless.  The girl child finally exhausted herself and fell to sleep.  Of course the two boys were still up and watching the TV when the parental units made their return.  But we all sat around and watched some more TV and finally we all went to bed.  The next morning was a little rough because the boy children had not had their usual allotment of hours in the sack  there were many highs and lows of moods.  The girl child had had way more than usual number of hours of sleep and was gratingly in good humor, though a little hungry.  I made my escape a little after noon when the prospect of ice skating with the little family seemed a disconcerting certainty

I may have neglected to mention that it snowed in Cool too on Saturday.  The children and their mother made a snow man.  Because it snows once in a blue moon in Cool, the children have all the requisite snow garments.  Snow garments have not changed much since I was a child with the possible exception that we no longer have to grow the plant and weave the material to make snow garments.  What I mean is, it took a lifetime to put all the stuff on, find the gloves, put the boots on the correct feet and what not.  Then the little darlings went scampering out to the white coldness and fussed around for awhile only to come back in just nanoseconds later so all the stuff could come off, get hung to dry,a few minutes would pass and the whole process began over again just minutes later.  This just made me tired. 

I am not too old to remember the "getting dressed to go out and play in the snow procedure" happening to my brother and I when we lived in Nebraska (yes Nebraska, I'll tell you all about it later)  and mummy would dress us all up in our wintry outfits and we'd go out for about 3.5 minutes and want to come back in.  My mother was wise to us though and I believe we had to stay out for a certain length of time, probably 20-30 minutes though in Nebraska it probably felt like days and it was dang cold.  Except for the time when I drove my brothers sled in to the concrete ditch and the bottom of the hill and crashed mightily and fractured some ribs and had a concussion.  My aim for the plywood bridge was off slightly.  I was allowed back in the house right away.  And this was before any nosy gomment agency butted in  with child protective services!  The parents became somewhat concerned when all I wanted to do was sleep.  So off to the emergency room it was.  As you can tell, there has been no lasting damage.  lol

I was engaged to watch a horse settle in who had just been imported from Ireland a week ago.  And I spent a good long weekend doing that very thing.  I watched it roll, scamper, buck and frolic.  When I wasn't watching, it jumped out of its paddock and made good its escape.  Awesome.  Happily it wasn't that interested in being free for very long and was soon captured.  I don't know why it didn't continue to jump out, but I am relieved to state that the owners came home way before that could happen again on my watch.  It is a simply charming horse with buckets of personality and I took loads of videos of it that didn't actually get recorded, but I sent them on to the new owners anyway.  No Oscars coming my way for shots of the dirt and the inside of my pocket.  The owners are far too well bred (lol) to comment on my failure to get movies to them.  But they have the same phone and probably know what a challenge all this modern technology is to us.  I'll have another opportunity to watch it beginning next week.  Perhaps I'll obtain a naughty horse cam to help with the watching duties.  jk

I've been told that these attempts at literature have a tendency to be too lengthy.  So to y'all I'll say adieu for now.  Maybe something interesting will happen or I'll remember some snippet that might amuse you, I am not optimistic.

Cheers,

Squidgy

ps:  so slowly I turned...not really.  But the phone slowly made a death spiral and I was forced to replace it.  Note to self.  Buy the bloody insurance.  Dammitall.  I then made my way to daughter Lindseys and assuaged my grief in a nice bottle of Pinot.  Lemonade dears lemonade...


Thursday, March 8, 2012

tv post

The spouse watches reality TV shows that originate almost exclusively from Georgia.  This is very disturbing.  Take Auction Kings, please.  It centers around a family of auctioneers in, where else? Georgia.  That would be enough for most people, but I digress.  In the last episode he watched, a shrunken head was on the block.  I mean really.   Really?  Really.  Not good.

Last night he/we watched Toddlers and Tiaras.  Now this is show about mothers who wasted their youth and must now live vicariously through their offspring.  They subject the spawns of their loins to baby beauty pageants.  So very wrong on every level.  So these mothers (and fathers and grandmothers) spend thousands of dollars on little hooker dresses and doll their kids up in false eyelashes, pounds of makeup, spray tans and false finger nails.  If the child has the gall to say lose a tooth, or not have a perfect array of ivory, then false teeth are inserted, they call the false teeth a flipper.  I call it revolting.  The hair styling is probably the most disturbing.  If you would take a look at your pictorial of Marie Antoinette before the beheading, you will get a pretty good idea what the hair looks like.  Simply a.m.a.z.i.n.g.  Not enough to just to have toddlers parade around in their little hooker dresses, some pageants have...bathing suit competitions carefully disguised as "costume of choice".  Ok,  I just got a little sick in my mouth.  But by far the most disturbing of all is what these "mothers" will feed their offspring to get, hmmm oh right their energy up.  One child proudly announced she'd just downed five Pixie Sticks in about two minutes.  A Pixie Stick is essentially fruit flavored sugar in a straw.  Another parent was a little sneakier when she forced her two year old to drink cokes for the buzz.  Where's a cop?  Now I realize that I am being judgemental and narrow focused, but really?  Baby Beauty Pageants?  Excuse me while I go shower.

More?  Of course.  There are the reality cooking shows, not from Georgia necessarily but I know one took place in Texas, close enough.  Anyway, bad manners, foul tempers, lots of tattoos (de rigour iffn you cook evidently) horrible hair and above all terrible shoes.  There are shows where you have to make something edible using all the ingredients in a mystery basket.  Why only just the other night there was the leftover basket.  Pot roast was one of the leftovers.  Dangerously close to being dry and over cooked on a good day, this chunk o meat had long passed its die by date and was a drab brownish gray and begged to be fed to the dog you don't like.  One of the wannabes made Tempura out of slabs of this.  Great idea to fry already overcooked meat. Not.   The judges were not pleased, but it was a good enough, or not as terrible as someone else's, offering to move on to the next level.  Tragic.

Dance Moms is on tap for the recording queue too.  Fat, big mouth dance instructor who badgers tiny ballerinas and puts them in suggestive and inappropriate costumes all the while haranguing the mothers who pay valuable money for the privilege.  Riveting.

One of the spouses most favorites is Dual Survival.  So you take one ex Army ranger type and pair him with a "live off the land pseudo hippy type freak", and drop them both in some inhospitable locale, give them a toothpick or something as their only tool and expect them to survive together in the wilderness.  Hint:  they always get out of it, but sometimes they have to eat worms or something.

Not enough for you?  How about Sons of guns?  Swamp Loggers?  Ice Road Truckers?  Women Behind Bars?  Right now I want all of you to feel sorry for me and buy me that IPad I so dearly must have.  Only one of you responded to my last entreaty and Malcolm?  that your wife would not like it is scarcely an excuse.  Step up man.

I'm going to go make some chocolate chip cookies now and drown my sorrows in butter and sugar.  Tonight we have the Top Chef reunion and I must be ready

One more thing

Dateline One Week Ago:

I was driving to Sonoma yesterday to be the trabajando du jour for HSM when I spotted a telephone pole just lying on the side of the road at a "it just fell there angle".   And I just thought to myself that nothing good could have come from the circumstance of a telephone pole just laying there because it probably had to have fallen off something and since it was still there, either whoever was driving the something didn't notice the pole had come loose and dropped to the ground on a busy road, or didn't care.  In any case eventually someone had to come along behind this situation and therein lies the problem.  So there it was  when I drove in in the morning and still there when I drove by on my way home.   There's a story in there somewhere.  Just like the car with the gigantic, pumpkin sized hole in the windshield.  It had all the requisite spidering that comes with splintered auto glassn and was parked or stopped suddenly on the side of the road on the way to the Two Rock Event Center in  Petaluma.  One time I drove by and there were many cops examining the car, like WTF, and I had to put  my phone down until I passed., but the car stayed there, as a matter of fact it was still there when I made my escape from Petaluma on Monday last.

I lived through the house sitting of two weeks unscathed.  I was neither bitten nor kicked.  Nothing died or ran away which is considered something of a victory to me.  That's not technically true.  A mouse met its end in a trap which completely grossed me out.  I had a day or two of angst debating whether or not to ignore it and its deadness or man up and remove it from the trap and dispose of it.  In the end, I picked it up trap and all with the manure fork and threw it in the dumpster avec trap.  Another day whilst dutifully examining drinking water levels in the containers, I noticed the shadowy outline of something dead on the bottom of one.  That grossed me out too.  I had to dump the water barrel and fork the dead thing  up and toss it in the field.  I couldn't make it to the dumpster because I was gagging.  Oh, it was a rat.  I amaze myself.  And you should be amazed as well.

Dateline A Week Later:

I have survived a weekend of grooming at an event.  It has been a very long time since anyone trusted me with their horses while they are there to see me do my uh magic.  I even braided!  And remembered why, back in the day, I considered it a very good investment to have someone braid for you.  Nonetheless, the mane stayed tied up in knots in spite of the slippery thread used to bind the hairs together.  Good equipment is vital to a professional outcome.   The horses did look pretty good as they went off to do their various jobs of the moment.  There was that rather unnecessary episode of one of the horses taking exception to yours truly and punishing me by tearing the lunge line out of my delicate paws and ripping around with the line flying behind her... twice.  My beloveds comment was less than sympathetic.  He marveled that I wasn't fined or scolded by the judiciary committee of the horse show and subsequently had some sort of sanction foisted on me.  I believe we call this wishful thinking.

I saw my little friends Sue and Linda.  They may be the two people who read this blog and as such have a rather high ranking in my appreciation book.  At any rate we do seem to have a lot in common such as impatience, intolerance and a jaded view of life in general.  I admire that in a person.  Sue is flogging jewelled spur straps, vintage stock pins and new this year, lapel pins in a little cottage industry venture.  Because I am a really fantastic friend and find stuff out, I discovered one of my other friends was in need of a stock pin and brokered a deal to exchange goods for valuable money and therefore have ingratiated myself in to the lofty aura of the babes from So. Cal.  Even to me that made no sense.  But you may take my word for it that she has really groovy stuff and had I a magnificent steed to ride I would be giving her all my money so I could have all her shiny stuff.  I like shiny as you well know.


My little friend Horse Show Mom was my companion at the show.  We got to share a room in the hotel together along with three children, one of whom is the offspring of HSM.  I will tell you right now that I do not find it adorable that she whined piteously about the delicate and infrequent snores I make in my sleep, while she babbles on incessantly in her sleep.  How cute was it that both Mom and daughter won their respective divisions?  The daughter had a mention of her win in the Jr. Training division in a popular Eventing website marveling at her age and all that.  The mother was not mentioned which is somewhat ironic, but you might of had to have been there.  FYI  Novice Horse is not Advanced.  Inside joke, but some of you might get it.

Not that you'll be surprised, but I did make a rather spectacular gaffe in the middle of a lot of people I didn't know.  So I saw this enormous horse trailer with human living quarters as well as horse quarters and lots of awnings and solar panels and pop out rooms and what not parked near where I knew one of my friends was parked.  Thinking she must have just purchased this rolling brothel looking contraptions, I came around the corner and queried, querulously, who owned the rolling house of ill repute.  Well,  it became almost instantly apparent that it did not belong to my friend at all.  No, it belonged to someone I did  not know, nay, never had laid eyes on in my life.  And she immediately demanded to know if I had just called her a prostitute.  I recovered rather more quickly that you'd imagine and replied that if she owned the rolling brothel then that would make her a madam.  She was mollified by that assessment, agreed the trailer could be used for that profession on the side and offered me a drink, which I took, out of politeness only of course, and we got along just fine from there.  Always remember to make lemonade out of your lemons.  And leave after your one polite drink...

I enjoyed a day at the zoo with the grandchillens yesterday.  We also had a picnic and played on the slide and spiderweb, (don't ask - I never saw the point of it, but the little tykes evidently knew what to do so all needs were served.)  We pulled a wagon with our stuff in it, but not with the children in it as was my intention, but they walk now so there you go.  Little Silas wore bright orange Crocs which I know used to belonged to his brother.  That was a long time ago.  They were not cute then, nor are they cute now, but it would seem they have the shelf life of a Twinkie and they do not look any different today than they did years ago.  While a good investment dollar wise, really, they are super awful to look at and the stupid little charms you can spend valuable money on just make them look like really ugly decorated pixie shoes.  Well that was emotional wasn't it?  Back to our adventure at the zoo.  My favorite creature of the day had to be the baby orangutan who was scampering about with a sheet over its body.  It looked like a little ghost and here it was not even close to Halloween.  Seemingly it was important that it be covered as we returned for another viewing after a bit and it had a large piece of heavy paper over its head.  I have a picture, but the IPhone won't share.

I have quite a few house sitting gigs set up which means that I won't have any horse show news for y'all.  What it does mean is I will be earning valuable money which makes the spouse happy and cranky at the same time.  He's very complicated and complex.  And not very tidy.  He has a new cat at work, well not new or probably even young, but new to him.  He likes having his own pet and the cat amuses him.  It (the cat) prefers to sleep on the desk between my beloved and his computer keyboard and tolerates the typing on the keyboard bit of computing but takes some exception to the use of the mouse.  I think the reason for that is obvious, but the spouse doesn't get it.  Do you?  My beloved is somewhat useless in the administration of medication for the creature and it has worms.  I bought a de-wormer for it because worms are disgusting and provided the spouse with the cat piller device, but because he's a man he can't seem to work out how to use it.  We had the same problem with the Starbucks Via coffee this morning.  It's instant dear.  Pour hot water over it.  Voila!  Running out of coffee for the machine is a really bad thing.  And having to demonstrate the making of instant coffee is embarrassing.  Pilling the cat really only has two options of places to insert the cat piller.  The mouth is the right one.  FML  The cat is Siamese and talks a lot.  Naturally the only civilized name for a Siamese cat is Meow C Dung but sadly it has another name, it is pathetic and I won't bother you with it.  Suffice it to say some of the guys at the Fairgrounds named it and it is not descriptive or good.

I take myself off to the land of the privileged tomorrow to put a beady eye on a new horse who arrived from the Land of the Shamrocks the other day.  Seemingly the proud new owners have pressing obligations elsewhere and need someone to blame watch over the new addition that it doesn't take the opportunity to jump out of its enclosures.  It's a jumping horse folks, what do you think it will do if it finds it needs to go somewhere else?  At any rate I seem to have fooled them in to thinking I am knowledgeable or at least alive and can handle the many opportunities for inopportune events.  Naturally I will keep you apprised of the happenings.  Hopefully the most exciting thing to happen will be dinner with friends.  Or drinks.

Remember to "spring forward" on Sunday.  I can't figure if you get more or less sleep, my mind doesn't work.  (that way)  But I assure you it will still be light when you finish your chores at night and that is a good thing.

Cheers,
Squidgy