Making Christmas Presents

I've been working hard on the Christmas presents this year. I will post pictures as soon as I can. I wouldn't want to give away the surprise for people getting the presents though, so I better wait 'til after Christmas.

Slacking

I know, I haven't posted for a long time. I've been a big slacker. I discovered Facebook after some urging from my brother and since I've been doing updates on there, updates were not being done here. I'm pretty excited because I've found friends I haven't talked to in ages and it's wonderful!

In regards to projects:

• The room/great room/dining room/project room is still in progress. A lot of furniture has been moved around and I think I have the final configuartion set up. There are still a lot of boxes that still need to be sorted/organized. I don't seem to get much done unless I have a "babysitter". I seem to need a person in the room with me, even if they are just sitting there talking to me. My brain doesn't seem to function without feedback from someone else.
• I have been working on painting table legs for the new computer table. They are these big cardboard tubes that will hold up a very large, very heavy oak door. I wanted to paint them gold and then do crackle paint with white paint. It just turned out looking not nice, so that has changed, but I got stuck deciding what color to paint it and haven't worked on it for a couple of weeks now-kind of frustrated with myself.
• Decided I had too many dishes and am trying to down-size. But getting overwhelmed with everything.
• Forcing myself to work on my tatting. Not enjoying it anymore. Can't figure out if it's because the project I've been working on for a year was too big/complicated, or I just don't like having to follow someone else's pattern rather than making up my own.
• Wanting to go back to school. Decided I want to be a costume designer for the ballet. So I was thinking my degree should be in Fashion Design/Costume Design/Theatre Design with possibly a minor in Graphic Arts and Theatre Management. I can't see any way to pay for it. I don't want to do full time work and full time school again. It really was too much last time I did that. Also, the whole stress=bad headaches is a bit of an obstacle.

So, if you can't tell I am seriously overwhelmed and frustrated with my life right now. I don't see any way to make my dreams come true. It's probably my perfectionist tendancies rearing it's ugly head. Gah!!!

The Window Well Trap

I have had two visitors in my window well recently. Both times I was alerted to the visitor by my cats suddenly running to that window. The first time it was a baby robin who had fallen in and couldn't fly out again. My dad came and was trying to catch it, but he was hampered by the parents dive bombing his head. He kept throwing the robin up and it would land on the edge of the window well and then fall in again. I finally asked my dad to move and caught it. Holding it very carefully I went down the hall, up the stairs, and released it on the front porch. It flew across the road and landed in the grass. The parents of course were still going crazy, thinking it was in the window well. It just sat there for the longest time. I walked across the road and got about a foot away from it. It hopped through the fence, onto the golf course and then hopped along the fence until it's mom came and then they flew off into the trees.

I always look at the robins around here looking to see if it's "our" robin and hoping it survived.

The second one was really early in the morning, probably 3 or 4 am. I heard this rustling and my cats were at the window immediately. I pulled out the screen, (in the process it broke because it was wedged in there so tight I had to yank on it). Shining a flashlight out, the cats and I discovered what looked like a mouse. Well there was no way I wanted a mouse living in my window well and so I let the cats out. They both smelled it, looked at it, Myste lifted a paw and touched it. It gave this high pitched squeak and both my cats freaked out. The cats were afraid of this thing.

Then Myste decided it was more fun to jump out of the window well and go exploring. So I replaced the screen as best I could, it wouldn't stay, so I closed the window. I quickly ran upstairs and out the front door. Myste was prowling through the bushes and was very unhappy when I caught her and brought her back in. Since she has no claws and I am seriously paranoid about her getting run over I could not allow her to stay outside.

What to do about that mouse? We have a humane mouse trap in the garage so after some searching and moving heavy objects I found it. I brought it down and put it in the window well and then played AOE3 for a while. I then went and checked and there it was, in the trap. But there was something else in the trap too...

A dead mouse's snout was caught in the back of the mechanism, and I don't know how long it had been there. Oh ICK!

So I carefully took the trap out to the back porch and my nephew Tayler carried it across the road and released the live one, then brought the trap back. We left it on the patio for my dad to deal with. Ugh.

Turns out the mouse was actually a Vole. My dad says the short tail is the indicator for that.

GROSS!

So I was making some dinner and thought scrambled eggs sounded good. I got out the eggs, washed them, got the pan hot, and cracked the first egg. It had a thick membrane inside and so I had to kind of break that too. Out fell some egg yolk and a little white and a big, bloody, gross blob. I just about threw up right there. I hollered for my dad to come save me and ran out of the kitchen. I don't think I will choose to eat eggs for a LONG time.

ROFL!

I received this in an e-mail from an aquaintance:


The Children Are Our Future.

This is a list of comments from test papers, essays, etc. submitted to science and health teachers by elementary, junior high, high school, and college students. It is truly astonishing what weird science our young scholars can create under the pressure of time and grades. The spellings are the original ones.

1. H2O is hot water, and CO2 is cold water.
2. To collect fumes of sulphur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube.
3. When you smell an oderless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide.
4. Water is composed of two gins, Oxygin and Hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is water and gin.
5. A super saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold.
6. Liter: A nest of young puppies.
7. Magnet: Something you find crawling all over a dead cat.
8. Momentum: What you give a person when they are going away.
9. Vacuum: A large, empty space where the pope lives.
10. Artificial insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull.
11. The pisol of the flower is its only protection against insects.
12. A fossil is an extinct animal. The older it is, the more extinct it is.
13. To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose.
14. For a nosebleed: Put the nose much lower than the heart until the heart stops.
15. For head colds: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat.
16. Germinate: To become a naturalized German.
17. The tides are a fight between the Earth and moon. All water tends towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.
18. Blood flows down one leg and up the the other.

I laughed so much I had tears streaming down my face. Especially the second time when my mom read it out loud because I knew what was coming and it was so funny.

Moving Rooms

I decided to change where my bedroom is located in our house. Here is a video of the basic furniture moving.

Megan and her ATTITUDE!

My niece Megan has come to stay with me for a week or so. While walking, (see link list for more info) I took a video of her and we both thought it was funny. It has been really great having her here with me because she is always so encouraging and helpful. In fact she made French Toast for me today because I said I was tired. Yesterday she helped me do the grocery shopping and even pushed the cart. It was actually kind of funny because she's this little thing and she is pushing this big Sam's Club cart which, with all the groceries, probably weighed more than she did. But she insisted so I let her. I love my Megan!

Return of the Mack

I like this song, but I'm not sure I care for the music video.