Countdown

The trip to Dallas for the Cowboys game is 2 days away.  I have to pack (lightly) and get the documents in order.  I haven't flown in 6 1/2 years, so I'm hoping it hasn't changed too drastically.  Do they pick random people to give body cavity searches to?
Do I look suspicious?
Is it ok if I get nervous?  Or will that make me look suspicious, and then the said body cavity search will happen?
When I get to Texas, is it ok if I try not to talk to anybody there, since Texans scare me (for the most part)?

In other news, I took this picture yesterday:

It's the view from my back door.
I was home yesterday with a bad headache.  This didn't make my headache better or worse, but it did make me a little happy.

Be prepared for an overabundance of pictures when I return from the trip.  I'm going to be taking pics like crazy.  It's not every day that you get to make your loved one's dream come true.

Ah, memories

My Mom kicks ass.
No, seriously, she kicks ass.
When I was a kid and my older brother was not the jackass he is now, but instead he was the very best coolest big brother any girl could ask for--when he wasn't protecting me from my sister, he was mouthy to Mom.  He was as mouthy as any teenager could be.  And to a small child such as I was, he was tall, like a giant, and I always looked up to him in more than the figurative sense.
I remember multiple times when he would give Mom shit about one thing or another and she'd grab his ear and give him hell.  It was all done in play (for the most part), in which my brother would be laughing while he yelled "Ow!!" and the spectators would be laughing at him for being stupid enough to get Mom riled.  No one messes with my Mom!  Trust me.  She broke a plastic spoon or two on his back when he needed a whoopin'.

Then there was the time I was supposed to go on a field trip in 5th grade.  We were going to go north, to a very exciting place, and I was very excited to go, because the trip was going to be SO exciting.
Now, Mom being Mom, she was running late.  I was running late.  We were running late.  We got to the school early--7:30.  That's early for a 10 year old.  Trust me.
I checked the door I was supposed to enter to meet my class before the trip.  It was locked!  Oh noes!  The school looked pretty much deserted and there was no bus waiting.  Being a brilliant 10 year old, I deduced that I'd missed the bus.  Much drama ensues with me being upset at missing the exciting field trip.  Mom decides it can't have been that long since the bus left, we'll just see if we can catch it!
Now, you see, it's rural Montana.  There's lots of long stretches of lonely highway, and back then the speed limit was 55 mph.  "Catching up" meant doing 60-65.  Off we go, heading the way we think the bus will go.  Zoooom!
We got about 15 miles out of town before Mom declares defeat--we would've seen the bus by that point and she couldn't chase it down the whole way.  She turned around and headed back toward town.  And, you guessed it, the bus passed us going the opposite way about 5 minutes after we turned around.
There goes my daredevil Mom, pulling a U-turn in the middle of the highway, in the middle of a foggy morning (did I forget to mention that?  Oh, well, it was really foggy.  visibility was crap) and takes off after the bus.  We were on a two-lane highway, and because of her desire to see her dearest daughter happy, she pulls up next to the bus.  She's keeping an eye on the road while yelling at me, "Get their attention!!  Wave them down!!"  So I'm going crazy, waving like a crazy-inflatable-flailing-arm-man, hoping someone, anyone will see me.  Please!
Someone did, they told the bus driver & teacher, and the bus pulled over so I could board.
My Mom needs a cape because she's clearly a hero.

Funny guy

I visited the Mister yesterday at work.  He works with an ex-NFL football player who lives here with his family.  The guy is really funny!
As I walk into the place w/Mister, he says to me, "D's here.  He's black.  Sh!"
And I laugh.
So D walks into the office where we're talking and Mister says, "I told her, 'D's here, he's black.  Sh!"
D chuckles a little bit then looks at me with a straight face.  "Am I black?"
Me:  Well, you've got a really dark tan.
Him:  Do I sound like a black guy?
Me:  Sure, I guess.
Him:  Do I smell like a black guy?
Me:  I have no idea what black guys smell like?
Him:  Well get up in here!
And he wraps his arms around me.  What a goof.

A People Post

I know people.  It's a shock, I know, but it's true.
I'm anti-social, but there's some people who I can't help but like.
These are among that group.

I had to start with the pets, of course.  The top guy is my cousin's dog, Cooper.  The cat is Creeps.  They're a team, a team of chaos.

Last year my cousin got married.  She's fabulous & gorgeous.  I'm lucky we reconnected.

This is Willy, the kid.  (My nickname for him)  This was taken last year at my cousin's wedding.

This is his Mom.  She's wonderful at everything she does.

This is him now.  He's awfully cute!

My favorite picture of him.

He's got a baby brother coming for Christmas...

Double the trouble, double the fun?

This is my uncle & aunt.  They are absolutely wonderful.

I'm pretty sure they're funny and/or goofy.

The next day, we had to go to this horrible place for my cousin's half marathon.
It was just terrible, I tell you.
The smell of the forest, the warmth of the sun, and a lake to look at.
I shudder at the memory.

We waited "patiently" by the finish line.

I took pictures of my beautiful aunt while we waited.

Finally she crossed the finish line!  13.1 miles in 2 hours & 20 minutes.  I'm so proud of her!

She looks pretty good considering she just ran for 19 days.  I mean, just over 2 hours.

On the way home, she slept.  Can't blame her one bit.

Ambers, Smudges, and Lilys, oh my!

I've spent some quality time with the camera on my face in the past couple of days.  Here's the results:

You just said, "Awww!" didn't you?

Amber and Lily at Play

Amber wants her dummy thrown.  She'll stare at it until someone does something with it.

So I throw it.  And Lily helps catch.

And continues to help.

Lily takes helping very seriously.

Then Amber starts the staring game again.

Lily wants to help, damn it!

Lily and Smudge

Attempting something that resembles play

In the house, it starts with a look.

Lily admires Smudge from afar.

Then Smudge admires Lily from a-close.

Aw, look, they're friends!

Or not.

Outside, Smudge begins by beckoning Lily, who's minding her own business.

"Uh oh, she saw me."

Smudge realizes her error.

And smacks Lily for it.

High Noon.

Smudge slowly crosses in front of Lily, like the stealthy predator she is.

And they're off!

Smudge The Cat

Still laying on her back.  Like a dogcat.  So damn weird.

This is Smudge's spot on the couch.

If she's in the house, this is where she lays.

I considered stitching "Smudge's Spot" there, but since she's always there, the point would be moot.

Lily The Baby

She looks cute.

She looks innocent.

And then she's been bad.
"I'm sorry, mom"

And she hides under the coffee table.

She occasionally hangs out with her tongue out.
Just the tip.
She was sleeping like this and I grabbed my camera.
She woke up.  Kind of.

Thanks to...

Thinking back over the past few years, I've come to some conclusions in regards to my relationship with the Mister.

Thanks to the Mister, I never had to experience the dating world.  Now, some people think that you need to meet a lot of people to know when you've been the right one.  I was lectured on it a time or two before we got married when I was 20.  After hearing some of the horror stories of the dating world, I'm happy to be married to the first guy I hooked up with.
Is it better to stick with filet mignon after the first time you tried it?  Or should you forget about that and try t-bones, ribeyes, sirloins, sausage, and hamburger, etc to see if the filet was REALLY as good as you though it was?  And then it's too late to get the filet back because someone else is hogging it all.
That's right, I just compared the Mister to a cut of beef.

Thanks to me, the Mister didn't marry a redhead named *M.  My sister is a redhead named *M and she's batshit crazy.  I think I did him a pretty big favor.  Not that he was going to marry my sister, but from all the redhead's I've experienced who are named *M--and I've met a few...you're welcome, Mister.

Thanks to the Mister, I get to experience the kinds of things I had only read about in my romance novels.  Kisses that really do overwhelm, and gestures that make my heart rate get a little faster.  I guess since I'd never really been kissed before I met him, anything that we did was overwhelming to my little heart, but that's beside the point.  Right?  Right.  (Did I mention I never experienced the dating world?)

Thanks to me, the Mister got to realize the miracle of Hamburger Helper.  That's right, Hamburger Helper.  We were poor when we first got married and moved into our first apartment.  We could afford little in terms of fancy foods, like filet mignon.  So "gourmet" was 6 different kinds of Hamburger Helper, which he absolutely LOVED.  I grew up having the stuff for dinner--but the Mister was raised in a family where dinners were made from wholesome ingredients and nothing came out of a box.  Boy, was he missing out!

Thanks to the Mister, I know that no one could ever accept and love me better than he does.  We went through a lot to be together (re: The Beginning of Us) and I'm sure we'll have battles to survive in the future, but at least we'll face them side by side.

Thanks to me, the Mister has settled in Montana.  Before he met me, he lived in a big, populated, sky-scraper-filled city in Canada.  He grew up there and liked it, but had always wanted to live in the States.  Then he met me, and took advantage of my naiveté (hah!  more like raging hormones) and married me so he could live happily ever after.  In Montana.  Kind of.
Here he gets to live in a small town where the commute is 3 minutes instead of 3 hours (seriously, traffic in Toronto was insane), he can go hunting and fishing and golfing and do manly man things when he feels the testosteronic urge.  Ok, so he could golf and fish in Toronto, but he couldn't hunt for big game!  And he LOVES hunting for big game!  He even practices his calls during the off-season--generally in the insane hopes that I'll come to the call?  He's odd.
I won't mention how much he hates the long, cold winters (snowed in June this year) that prevent him from golfing in the spring, or the lack of things to do when he's not hunting, or...oh, wait, I'm supposed to not be mentioning these things.  Never mind.

My confused pity party

Life for me has been difficult lately.  Very luckily, none of the difficulty lies in my personal life--just the work life.
One co-worker accused me of being passive aggressive because I don't fight back when another co-worker lashes out at me.  I don't consider it being passive aggressive, I consider it being who I am.  I'm an introvert--so I've been told by professionals.  Do I believe a person who's gone to school to help me, or a co-worker who has none of that training?  Is it helpful to tell a person they're doing something wrong if you mean it in a kind way when what you're saying isn't right?
Needless to say, doubts fly around in my head every day now about who/how/what I am.
According to my handy dandy dictionary, an introvert is:  a person predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things.
That sounds like me.
Passive-aggressive is:  of or denoting a type of behavior or personality characterized by indirect resistance to the demands of others and an avoidance of direct confrontation, as in procrastinating, pouting, or misplacing important materials.
I'm sure that can be me as well.  I avoid direct confrontation because it frightens me, it always has.  So I think of how I feel in such situations and do nothing.  And work has demanded things of me that I absolutely refuse to do--like become a person I'm not.  I'm not sure that's "indirect" though.
I'm probably making excuses for myself.  I know who I am--and I'm continuing to learn more as I slowly change as life happens.
I'm a sarcastic
goofy
sensitive
quiet
boisterous
intelligent
funny
nurturing
supportive
stubborn
anti-social
awkward
basketcase.

I wish I could use more of the un-used brain cells I have to try to figure out a way to explain myself in a way that would help people understand that I have no idea what I'm doing, I just want to survive the day without a headache or an undue amount of stress.  I'm pretty sure if I could figure that out, it'd help a lot more people than just me.

Soap Box

Growing up in a small agricultural community, I learned to respect the will of Mother Nature.  If the weather was bad, crops were bad or livestock died.

Now that I'm an adult, I see Mother Nature in a whole new light.  The land can be misused and species can be hunted to extinction--Mother Nature can only do so much to fix that.

So I have my soap box.  I don't eat or use products that contain certain ingredients:

• Parabens--not necessarily because of the environment, but because they've been linked to cancer.  They're found in almost everything in bodycare, generally near the bottom of the list of ingredients, and there's multiple types, so anything that ends in -paraben is a no-no for me.
• Oil palm tree derivatives--found in every.damn.thing anymore.  Sodium laureth (or lauryl) sulfate, palm oil, partially hydrogenated palm oil, etc. are found in food products and in bodycare--shampoo, hand wash, toothpaste, etc.  Palm oil plantations are taking over Southeast Asia and leading to deforestation of rainforest land, specifically and most written-about, orangoutang habitat.
• "Made in Japan" or "Made in China"--this is the most recent thing, and mostly because of the discovery that China and Japan are slowly killing off endangered species that will likely be unable to rebound.  On the land and in the sea, animals are being killed for "delicacies" in these countries.  Asses.
• Beef.  I'm trying to cut back on this, which is a bit hard to do where I live.  It's a cattle culture around here.  I'm not cutting out red meat all together, I'm trying to switch to wild game or bison.  Beef is very bad for the environment because of the amount of water needed to keep them alive and the fact that they let off methane, an even worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

I get fired up about stuff like this.  I'm turning into quite the treehugger.