How Can I Need a Vacation When I Just Had a Vacation??

An actress made a rather astute observation about her life.  I feel as if she took the words right out of my mouth.   She said, “A Buddhist friend told me that if you’re feeling stressed, get rid of the stuff you don’t need and finish the things you’ve started.  So I finished the ice cream and the vodka in the freezer and I’m feeling lots less stress.”

How can one person be stressed when she’s on vacation supposedly having a relaxing time and yet when she returns home several days later she’s more of a nutcase than when she left?  The nutcase in question would be me.  You see, we did go on vacation.  We went away for a few days out to the country to a lovely cottage (if only it were mine).  From the pic below you can see it’s surrounded by forest and it’s all by itself – nice and private, big and chocked full of luxury.

So what was the problem?  The very first evening we arrived, I hurt my foot – hurt it to the extent I couldn’t walk, just hobble.  Oh, we enjoyed a fire in the amazing back fire pit and we roasted marshmallows and drank cold Rolling Rock beer.  But my foot hurt.  Dammit.  This is vacation.

Devoted Spouse enjoying great outdoors

me enjoying Rolling Rock beer which made my foot hurt less

I tolerated the foot injury, knowing full well it was my own fault.  I put it out of my mind (and put it on an ice pack), watched Devoted Spouse grill some Omaha Steaks, and determined to enjoy the peace and quiet of this woodsy vacation.  Dinner was good – there was some excellent Pinot Noir wine involved which also helped quiet the pain in the foot.  Ahhhhh.

Towards bed time I hobbled into the dressing area to make myself ready for bed.  As I was removing my tee shirt I noticed something – something which freaked me out twenty thousand times more than the injured foot; in fact, I forgot all about the fact my foot hurt.  There at my collarbone was a TICK.  Oh sweet merciful heavens, there was a TICK and thankfully he was still crawling around on me; he hadn’t dug his little Lyme Disease infested head into my body at that point.  I picked him off, threw him in the sink and stood there watching him try and crawl back toward my flesh.  I grabbed some toilet paper, picked him up, flushed him down the toilet and then just for good measure, flushed the toilet enough to make the water meter spin so fast and hard it would change the axis of the earth.  That sucker was gone!  Fun vacation so far…

Thankfully, the next day instead of wearing flip flops (which caused the problem) I suited up in my best arch support running shoes and we were off for a day of shopping antique stores and photo opportunities.  Now, you don’t know this about me, but I have a thing for old barns. Yeah, strange, huh?  I like barns that look like they’re about to fall down and if there are barnyard animals included, well, all the better.  Devoted Spouse helped me locate my favorite barn which I had taken a shot of last fall when the colors were rich reds and orange.  Now everything was green and I wanted another shot.

Of course I found some of my favorite types, too, some even equipped with a cow!

this is actually on concrete and terra cotta stilts!

So the pictures combined with some excellent finds at an antique shop more than made up for the hurt foot.  The quiet romantic time spent with Devoted Spouse helped, too.  Why am I still stressed?

Well, here I sit Thursday morning  with an icepack on my back, one on my hip, and one wrapped around my foot — I have a mammogram scheduled at 10:00 (ouch) this morning.   It’s now about 7:30 a.m. and I haven’t finished this blog, let alone gotten showered and dressed – and the installer for the new range/oven should be arriving between 9:00 and noon.  I’m hoping I’m at the doctor’s getting my boobs smashed to smithereens while the installer is here at the house with Devoted Spouse and that when I come back home, hopefully with bruised boobs intact, there will be a lovely new range/oven installed in my kitchen with no collateral damage and Devoted Spouse standing there with a smile on his face.

Good Lawd I need another vacation.  Or maybe we just need to move to the country.  I actually found a house I think we could afford:

okay so it needs a little work...

Shhhhhh! Taking a Break!

definitely time for a rest

Shhhh.  Do not disturb.

Crone and Bear It is pooped and taking a short blogger break.

Will return in a few days after batteries have been recharged.

Happy Independence Day America!

Crone and Bear It wishes all of you a very Happy 4th of July!  Be thankful we are a free nation and never forget those who fought to give us our freedom and independence.  Please also take time today as you’re grilling your hot dogs or hamburgers and spending fun time with your family to remember those who still fight around the world to keep us free and safe from tyranny and terrorism and pray for our brave servicemen and women.

Facts…Funny & Freaky for Friday

Since staying relatively close to home and resting my injured body these past many months, I’ve found many hours of free time with nothing to do but read books, peruse the internet, and look at local papers.  One finds the strangest stories in the local paper and I can’t help myself — I have to relate these items to you because it isn’t any fun unless one shares.

Not long ago I awakened a bit foggy-headed, made my way downstairs to my comfy chair where Devoted Spouse had the morning’s paper waiting.  I hadn’t had any coffee and I wasn’t really with it, but I started reading the paper anyway.  I came across an article which stated that Ohio Chlamydia cases surpass those anywhere else in the U.S.  There even was a little chart with red and blue lines showing the rise of Chlamydia cases over a period of years.  My first thought was , well, damn skippy good for us;  at least Ohio is first at something.  Then my coffee was delivered, I took a few sips and my brain kicked in.   I realized that Chlamydia is a venereal disease and  it’s safe to say my pride in my state was just all shot to hell.  What a fact to be famous for.  Ick.

Yesterday, again I picked up the local paper only this time to find out some scientific stuff that is truly creepy.  It seems that alligators in Florida are developing stunted genitals. What a surprise the female alligators are in for during mating season – can you imagine the snickering going on in the rivers as the lady alligators get together and start comparing notes?   Not only that, it appears there are some bizarre deformities showing up in other water animals, such as frogs, salamanders, and smallmouth bass.  The smallmouth bass are becoming “intersex fish”; in other words, there are boy bass who are laying eggs.  What is this world coming to?  Then I got to the part of the story that is really scary — this stuff is happening to people, too.  This article claims 7% of newborn baby boys are being born with undescended testicles which, fortunately for them, tend to self-correct over time.  Now here is a perfect spot in this story for me to talk about men who have no b@lls, but I won’t sink to that level. It is, however, tempting.

Instead I will tell you what the “experts” think is happening.  There are chemicals being released into the atmosphere, the world, the water, and various other places known as endocrine disruptors.  You didn’t think you’d get a science lesson today, did you?  These endocrine disruptors are “widely used in agriculture, industry, and consumer products.”  The problem is the article never explains what the heck these endocrine disruptors are — what is the chemical(s) being used and how do we stop this?

The article went on to tell me that some of these chemicals are showing up in our water supply — from (this is not nice) the estrogens in human urine (as in when a woman is on the pill) showing up in our sewage and water treatment plants.  Oh crap on a crutch, we’re all drinking estrogen.  Now that might explain why over the last 25 years my Devoted Spouse has become so much more of a sensitive guy – ya know, the kind that cries when the National Anthem plays, or if a puppy gets hurt…good Lawd he’s drinking estrogen out of the kitchen faucet.  I swear I’m going back to bottled water for him.

There actually is a group of people known as the Endocrine Society who issued a 50-page statement on this — 50 pages of what these endocrine disruptors are doing to all of us.  One of the more amazing side effects is a link to cancer in both men and women, issues with thyroid, metabolism, and obesity.  Whoa up!  It’s not the Whoppers or the Big Macs, you nasty marketing sumb*tches…it’s endocrine disruptors wreaking all this havoc.  Holy moley Batman.

The EPA has known about this since at least 2003 and yet I’m just now finding out that a honcho at the Science and Environmental Health Network thinks we should be concerned.  I’m feeling pretty sorry for all those fish who don’t understand why they’re laying eggs and those poor alligators who can’t get busy,not to mention the impact on humans.

Here’s a direct quote from a professor of environmental health science at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Robert Lawrence.  Are you ready?  He states: “It’s scary, very scary.”  Ya think d*pstick?   I say it’s time to stop worrying about mercury in tuna and find out what the heck is an endocrine disruptor.

And for goodness sake limit your water intake from the kitchen faucet unless your spouse needs to be a bit more sensitive.  But, if you find your husband trying on your lingerie – that’s it – rip that faucet right out and hand him a bottle of Evian water instead!

Home on the the Range Which is out of My Range…

Yes, it’s finally true.  I went to Sears Wednesday and took advantage of a sale and bought a new Jenn-Air range/oven to replace the piece of crap GE Profile that had been in the house since it was built and which died a horrible death last January, the same day I had my accident.  It was an eerie coincidence.  I fell, and the oven went Tango Uniform.   This is what the old piece of crap looks like: notice the ugly burners – ugh!

El piece 'o crap

Here is El Piece o’ Crap’s  entirely too expensive replacement.  The only difference is I ordered it in black, but could only find a picture of the stainless steel.  Use your imagination.    Suffice to say it has a nice clear cooktop and a convection oven and it’s reeeeeel purteeee.  The good part is I get 12 whole months to pay it off – and I’m going to need every one of them!

Many of the Jenn Airs you see advertised have the cute little grill on one side, but I just wanted burners – we grill outside or use our George Foreman grill inside.   Still it cost  a small fortune even with various sales and discounts.  It about killed me to have to do this, but being without an oven for almost 6 months now is long enough.  And the biggest issue is this appliance has to have its own downdraft system because it sits in the middle of the room with no overhead vent.  Had I thought about this at the time I bought this house, I might not have bought this house for just that reason.  Downdraft oven/ranges are not cheap.  In fact this is probably the most money I’ve ever spent on an appliance in my life..oh yeah there was that weird night I couldn’t sleep and ended up with a Montel Williams emulsion blender – but that’s merely a minor aberration on my part and it didn’t cost that much (really).

We were long  overdue to fix this problem so I sucked it up and turned over my Sears charge card and shivered with fear.    As you can deduce by the first picture next we will have to replace the countertops on the island and throughout the kitchen.  More money I don’t have going into this money pit so I can sell it one of these days, if the housing market ever improves, and move into something smaller and in a more southerly location.

I’m a tad worried about this entire transaction.  First of all the man in the appliance section didn’t smell too nice.  His Right Guard had given out on him; although he was a nice enough gentleman.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him not to raise that arm.  He was a considerably older gentleman and I felt bad because he said he had retired and then come back to work and would probably work till he died.  What a sad commentary on today.

Lest I get too far off subject and all maudlin on you about various economic woes…what worried me most about this was that it was too easy.  I did a little internet research, found what I wanted, took a picture of what we currently have, Devoted Spouse took all appropriate  measurements, we marched into Sears and 15 minutes later I was signing the bill and had delivery and installation all set up.  It was entirely too easy.

The last time something was this easy the wrong couch was delivered – but I liked the color better so I never told the store they had made a mistake.   This time we have to wait for a call from the installer who is a contractor of Sears, probably named Bubba and has interchangeable magnetic signs for the side of his panel truck depending on what he’s doing on any given day.   He’ll give us details of exactly when he’ll be here  to deliver and install.  Now, we’re getting ready to run away for a few days so I’m sure Bubba will call while we’re gone, we won’t answer or return his call, and he’ll cross us off his list only to tell us when we return that he can’t possibly install this until April of 2010 because he’s booked up. Of course by then Sears will no longer carry this model and I’ll just have to give up on having an oven at all.  That would be my luck you know.  You know the crap that follows me around.  I’m telling you, I’m uneasy about this purchase and my blood pressure won’t settle down until that oven/range is in, installed, and working correctly.  In the meantime, while I wait, I’m supposed to go to the country for a few days of relaxation.  I will no doubt spend those days pacing and worrying about coming home to find a range/oven just sitting out in my driveway on some wooden pallet in the rain and some strange guy with a bad comb-over and those wide suspenders peeling out of my driveway in his panel truck with the bald tires squealing.    Gah…..

Okay – back to the store — While I’m making all these arrangements, Devoted Spouse notices a sign on the oven/range that states “Take this home today.”  He says, “Honey, we can just take this home with us.”   I envisioned him trying to get that oven into my car, let alone trying to get the old one out of the kitchen and hook up the new one.   I can hardly walk and he thinks he can simply take this oven home with us.  I was successful in stifling the hysterical laughter that threatened to come out of my open mouth and simply gave him “the look.”    He somewhat meekly walked back to my side while I finished the transaction.  Good man.  Don’t make me end up in the Heart hospital today with pains running down my arm; our vacation is paid for and it’s right around the corner.

Anyway, the nice, but fragrant, man at Sears also told me something slightly suspicious.  He said if our electric is not up to code the installer may have to charge us additionally to fix the problem.  Huh?  Why would a house built in the early 1990s  not be up to code?  That really bothered me, but not as much as when the Sears man quickly amended that statement to include the fact that this rarely happens.  Again, he doesn’t know my life, does he?  Now I have to sleep at night wondering if my house is up to code.  Ackkkk.

I’m having visions of the oven not fitting through the door, the delivery/installer ripping my floor or destroying my cabinets, or any other of a thousand things that could happen.  What if it is installed and the next day Gretchen the Housecleaner Extraordinairre decides to clean the cooktop with Comet.  Oh, the scenarios in my head are getting uglier by the moment.    I just want this over with.  Then again, maybe they’ll bring the wrong model and it will be nicer and I’ll just have to overlook that it’s the wrong one… Nah.

Oh sweet merciful heavens this means I have to cook again.  I wonder if I can cancel the order…

Hair Removal…or Why Can’t My Legs Be Bald?

I’ve blogged before about products we girls (and some guys) have used in the past for the removal of hair.  It’s never fun.  I know Devoted Spouse absolutely abhors having to get up in the morning and shave — that’s one of the reasons he keeps his mustache…one less part that needs the razor.  I’ve talked about that gawdawful invention the EpiLady which literally pulled out my hair from the roots and was promptly thrown in the trash the first time I used it.  I may have discussed other things such as depilatories or waxing (oh Dear Gussie, I’ve watched waxing at the beauty salon and I can tell you in my life that’s never gonna happen – I’d  gladly snort a Mountain Dew up my  nose before I ever agree to hot wax treatments.)

What’s making me re-visit this subject is an article (a very small article mind you) in the local paper which talks about how it seems that the more you shave, the darker and thicker your hair grows back.  I always thought that was just an urban myth and never experienced it myself actually.  Now if this is TMI, just tune out, coz it’s gonna get worse and probably more personal.  Or stick around – it may be fun to discuss this subject.

The article claims this “myth” is just an optical illusion – it only seems like you are growing more hair because “the chemical-exposed and sun-lightened hair has been cut off.”  Huh?  They got this from a book by two doctors for heaven’s sake.  These doctors claim hair that is cut with a razor has sharp ends so the surface seems rougher — that’s all; it isn’t really darker or thicker.  Whew!  I’m so glad to hear this.  Until I read further and discover….

If you use something like waxing (which I will do when Hades freezes over, see above) or a product such as Nair (which I have been known to use before) your hair WILL grow back thicker.  Well holy crapoli, Batman, I used some of that Nair stuff made for faces coz I was getting that annoying peach fuzz that appears on the chins of menopausal women (like not having to live with less Estrogen isn’t bad enough, God in his infinite wisdom, now endows us with hair on our chins. )  Anyway for the longest time I used this facial Nair and I suddenly started looking like Billy Mays (RIP) — remember that black beard he always had?  Time for different tactics.  Now I lighten it and live with it and have been known to tweeze the occasional darker straggler.    Gah…

Shaving has also taken on a new and more important priority in my life.  Since it’s summer, I’m wearing shorts (not that I look that good, but they’re comfy) especially the terry and jersy-type wear specifically for exercising.  Those are what I wear when I go for my physical therapy sessions with Agador and James Belushi.  So basically, I’m having to shave constantly in order for these guys (who do alot of very personal touching (but not inappropriate, mind you) around my legs, both lower and upper.   The exercise clothes (shorts) tend to ride up a bit at times when my legs are being manipulated and I get the deep muscle massages and I’m not going to be embarrassed by stray hairs (and yes, the therapists constantly are rearranging my shorts to keep me from flashing anybody).  Do you know how difficult and painful it is to continuously have to shave your legs as you are recovering from back surgery?  It’s not easy.  No wonder I get to some of the PT appointments a tad bit cranky.  If they only knew…

I hope my PT guys appreciate my nice smooth legs — I’m thinking they probably don’t care – I can’t imagine some of the things they must tolerate as they are working on patients (we’ve talked about this before too – as in uncontrolled bodily functions).  But I’m determined to maintain smooth legs as long as I possibly can.

It was so easy – put on the Nair – hop in the shower – done.  Now since it’s been proven that makes the hairy issue worse, I’m back to using the razor again.  I thought menopause meant this stuff would stop growing — another urban myth – once hairy…always hairy.  I’m telling you, in my next life, I’m coming back as something hairless, with my  luck it will be something like this:

waxy monkey frog

Guess I should just be thankful I have enough brain neurons working to understand how to work the razor and be grateful for hair in my life.   And at least my right hand is working again because if I had to shave left-handed, well there just aren’t enough supplies in the local blood bank to save me…

Stay Out of the Sugar Canister

Awhile back my bud, Delaney did a posting on a meme she was tagged on Home Staples – what she had in the cupboards – sounded like something I could get some fun out of – heaven knows there are places in my cupboards I haven’t looked at in ages.  Now, while Delaney gave you staples – I thought I’d come clean and let you know what treasures I find as I go through various hiding places.

Starting in the kitchen, since it has the pantry, I opened the pantry doors to find standards like olive oil, Pam spray, Saltine crackers, a can of chick peas, some canned soups from Healthy choice, entirely too many boxes of pasta, a jar of spaghetti sauce and some cake mixes that have been in there for who knows how long  (I don’t eat cake), along with various decorating items like those little bottles of sprinkles (when desperate I have been known to eat them out of the bottle),  a few cans of pre-made icing (Devoted Spouse likes to eat it out of the can – you’d think we were total Rednecks),  and kitchen towels (my kitchen drawers are full of gadgets, Reynolds Wrap, and every Yellow Pages ever printed (why can I not throw them out?  – no room for towels).  The upper shelf holds large items like some vases, a few pots I rarely use, a jar of molasses (why?) and I found an old Vera Bradly lunch tote that I haven’t had use for since I retired.   Further down in the pantry we find the staples like flour, Splenda, and brown sugar that is hard as a rock, a box of Bisquick, a ton of plastic grocery sacks (well, they have to go somewhere), more crackers, an old can of beets, a dog toy (don’t ask), several boxes of Shake n Bake, chicken stock, entirely too many boxes of dried onion soup (they must have been on sale one day) a bottle of barbecue sauce whose “use by” date was sometime last year, several tins of my beloved sardines, and a jar of anchovies in oil (yum-yum).  At the very bottom of the pantry is the box of trash bags, the useless Jack LaLane juicer (the one I wrote about on Crap on a Crutch awhile back) and some junk that doesn’t belong in a pantry like the three-pack of Clorox wipes (again, another sale item) and a Swiffer I never use.  Well, that’s not too bad – there are other items but you don’t need to know them all.

I know I have flour, sugar and those type of staples in the pantry but I also have several Longabarger baskets on my counter that I use to store flour and sweeteners but I don’t use sugar really and that canister is empty.  The other day as we were quickly clearing the clutter out of the way prior to the visit of Gretchen House Cleaner Extraordinaire, I noticed several bags of ammo that Devoted Spouse had bought at a recent gun show – so I shoved them into that canister, put the top on and promptly forgot about it.  Hmmm…

doesn't everyone keep 300 rounds of ammo in the sugar jar?

Moving to the fridge we find milk that’s a little old, cans of diet A&W root beer and Coke Zero, some moldy broccoli, Velveeta slices (I know, not very healthy, but so good for cheese and sweet pickle sandwiches), sweet pickles, various condiments, defrosting chicken thighs, a bottle of diet Cran-Grape juice (it goes with the bottle of Grey Goose vodka that’s stashed in the freezer), a lime, several packages of cold cuts, bacon, cottage cheese, yogurt, spinach, lettuce, and a few cherry tomatoes that I need to finish using up real fast, a bag of cherries and several tupperware containers of God-knows what – and I’m not opening them either.

Off we go to the hall bathroom where under the sink we find  extra tp (thankfully), cleaning supplies, one of those candle burner thingies we all have, room freshener (self-explanatory), another basket chocked full of Guns and Ammo magazines, American Rifleman, Astronomy, Civil War Times and other manly reading material,  and a dog toy (don’t ask).

Upstairs to the guest bath and we discover more cleaning supplies, another candle burner (what is with this candle fetish I seem to have?) a basket of mini-toiletries I keep on hand for the guests I never have so I pilfer from it every time Devoted Spouse and I travel, several rolls of tp, extra hand soap, a shower cap and an old issue of Country Home magazine .

You already know what’s in my linen closet – I’ve posted about that on an earlier C&BI and I’m happy to report that the linen closet still looks just as nice as the “final” picture I posted on the blog the day I cleaned out that closet.  The only addition to the closet is every morning I take the very shredded area rug out of the guest bathroom and roll it up and store it on the floor of the closet so in case someone happens to stop by and use my upstairs guest bath, they won’t see what the dog does to the rug at night.  Then each evening when we go to bed, out comes the “special” shredded rug just for EmmaLou to keep shredding to her heart’s content.

In the master bath, there is another linen closet – a double wide one with mirrored doors and it holds my beloved Bare Minerals makeup and every cosmetic brush that has ever been produced along with creams, potions, lotions, and all the accoutrements a lady needs to keep herself looking quasi-gorgeous.  Further down on another shelf there seems to be another dog toy (this is getting annoying).  This closet is divided into a his and hers, but Devoted Spouse would say it’s mostly a hers.   He does have about 6 inches worth of room on two shelves that he also has to share with the first aid supplies and I may need to use some of that room for the rest of my stuff soon.   He is much lower maintenance than I, so it’s only fair I get the lion’s share of this closet.  Plus I have to share this with bath towels and shampoos – and more tp.   Oh, and there are the floor of the closet are the flip-flops I couldn’t find the other day—how’d they get in the linen closet?

I think I’ve shared enough staples with you for one day.  Next time maybe we’ll explore dresser drawers – oh yippy skippy that should yield some interesting treasure.

Three Items and Voila – Dinner is Served!

The other day my friend Michele over at It’s a Dog’s Life posted about making dinner from 3 leftover items – she turned baked potatoes, an onion, and some corn on the cob into a yummy potato and corn chowder.  She’s so creative — so I, in my normal smarta$$ way, sent her a comment about the 3 items I had to use and what could I possibly do?  I had a can of sardines, some cottage cheese and leftover green beans.

Infinitely wise, she told me in no uncertain terms to throw the sardines in the garbage, take the cottage cheese and add a can of tomatoes to it, toss in some spices and then add the green beans.  Boil some pasta, and voila, dinner is ready.  That sounded entirely too easy and I couldn’t imagine using the cottage cheese that way, but what the heck, I’m game.

I found a can of diced tomatoes in my pantry, along with some Fiori pasta, and the necessary spices.  The only  additions I made to her recipe were to add in some Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes to the tomato sauce.  I also had on hand some Italian breadsticks, some spinach and a few cherry tomatoes.  Look what it became:

Not having any wine on hand, I substituted Coke Zero in our favorite Ohio State glasses.  It was a wonderful meal – in fact even though Devoted Spouse claims to detest cottage cheese, he went back for seconds!

Thanks, Michele for giving me such a super idea and the kick in the pants I needed to start being a little more creative in the kitchen – oh yeah, I guess I better get off top dead center and buy that new oven, huh?  BTW, I kept the can of sardines but promised Devoted Spouse only I would eat them and never directly in front of him.  LOL

So now I’m scrounging thru the pantry and I’m seeing a can of pink salmon, some Saltines, cream of chicken soup and canned peas – I’m thinking it’s casserole time.  There’s also a can of beets in there…those have me a little worried…

Fur Flyin’ Friday…or Alright, You Can Stay, no Sit, no Lie Down

bad dog and bad speller

Okay, so the guy who wrote the sign can’t spell – I think he/she gets the message across.  Watch out — there’s a bad canine in the area.  Now I couldn’t possibly have any experience with bad dogs, could I?  I imagine my 5 hardcore readers know exactly to whom I refer – the illusive, adorable, always looking innocent Golden Destroyer, EmmaLou.

She’s been up to her old antics lately.  I have an antique decorative tin box from Germany in my living room.  I got it when we lived overseas and I have 3 of them in my home, all in different colors.  The one in the living room is done in maroon and highly decorated – it’s about 16″ by 14″ x 7″, a pretty good size cookie tin.  What’s important about it is that it holds every card and letter Devoted Spouse ever gave me.  That’s not a cookie tin; that’s a treasure box.  I would show a pic but my&^%^^%%%$# camera battery just this minute died.  Gah.  Okay – it looks something like this:

example, not my actual tin

You can see how lovely it is.   These tins are not that easy to find – although this picture came from an eBay item I saw and it was going for only $18.99 – what a bargain.  Anyway, you get the idea.  This is something nice, it’s important, and it has value to me.

Guess who I caught gnawing on it like it was a cheap bone?  Oh yeah, EmmaLou.  It was Thursday morning, and I was wrapped up in a rousing game of online SmartAss with my Twitter buddies.  I’m trying very hard to come up with some obscure piece of information (which I did think of, by the way) when I look over and see EmmaLou in the corner of the couch where this tin is located on the floor.  I thought she had a bone with her until I got up from my comfy chair, tossed my laptop onto the table and went to inspect.  Gah…I caught her just in time, she had just started to drool on it and was rubbing her teeth on the side of the tin. Dilemma – save the tin, play SmartAss, save the tin, play SmartAss.  I picked up the tin and tossed it on the couch and ran back to my laptop in time to actually win a round.  What a save.

Is there such a thing as caninicide?  I was about to commit this pseudo-crime later in the day when I found her dragging a pillow from the couch around the room very proudly displaying her pillow pilfering prowess.  I had to chase her and I wasn’t in any shape to chase her.  Yes, I was going to kill her and I was going to do it slowly and I was going to enjoy it.

And then the oddest thing happened. I received a call from Sketches, the local frame shop, telling me my painting of EmmaLou was all framed and ready to be picked up.  If not for that call, Devoted Spouse would no doubt still be covering a rather large mound of dirt in the backyard, and I would be ordering a plaque to commemorate the site of EmmaLou’s last stand.

But instead I went and picked this up:

painting done by EmilyofTexas

This is the painting done by my friend from Texas, Emily, and in case you can’t read it, it says “Emma Lou The Golden Destroyer loves Linda and Larry with her whole heart” and on the very bottom it says, “I Got You”.   I had it framed with blue to match the blue Emily chose and a wood frame that matches EmmaLou’s fur.  Doesn’t it look fabulous?  Devoted Spouse hung it up on the wall in our entry hallway so anyone entering our home will be sure to see this marvelous rendering of EmmaLou.

Do you believe in fate?  Because it was fate that gave EmmaLou another chance.  One fateful phone call saved her raggedy-ass from a whoopin’ the likes of which she’s never seen, and I am loath to lay a hand on my pup – but I was this close to smacking the crapola out of her by late Thurs afternoon.  Did I mention the area rug she has now ripped to shreds not on just one side but on the other side as well?  Uh-huh.  Bad to the bone is my little girl.

And then she wears out, collapses on the family room floor and looks so innocent and adorable and I melt all over again.

who can resist those eyes?

Yes, you ducked a bullet today my little missie – let this be a lesson to you — better be a good girl for the next few days and if you so much as look at my Nuremberg tin again…you better run like your doggie life depends on it, coz it might!

A Slightly Fractured Fairy Tale

Gather round kiddies.  Aunt Cronie is going to tell you a story.  It’s a love story.  Stop saying blechh, sit down, shut up, and listen.

Once upon a time, 26 years ago a 29-year old princess married a 39-year old prince.  It was a happy time in the Kingdom and all the peasants were pleased because the King gave them extra loaves of moldy bread and jars of watered down wine and they all gathered in the courtyard and shouted, “Huzzah, huzzah!”  Long live the new Prince and Princess.

Okay, enough of that crap – that’s not quite what happened.  Actually, 26 years ago, June 25th 1983,  Devoted Spouse lost his senses completely and married me.  It was quite the special day for us, if a tad non-traditional and oh, alright, a somewhat comedy of errors.

As I recall it was hotter than the hubs of Hell that day.  We were to be married in the townhouse which I was renting with my roommate, Bobbi Jane (whom I called Buckwheat, but that’s another story) who was also my Maid of Honor.  I wisely turned the air conditioner to the lowest possible setting and proceeded to cram about 30 people into the tiniest living room you have ever seen.  What was interesting about the arrangement of this townhouse was the living room was connected to the dining area by a step up and it was set off by a white iron railing.  So the stepped down living room was great for all of us and we placed the preacher up one step into the dining room so he rather looked down over all of us like at a church.  Okay, it wasn’t a Redneck Wedding but it was a bit on the cheap side.

We had both been married before – I had already experienced the church thing walking down the aisle in the fancy white dress (although it was a mini dress much to everyone’s horror – but that was 1971 so what could you expect?)  Anyway, Devoted Spouse and I didn’t belong to a church, didn’t want to make a big fuss and didn’t want to spend alot of our hard earned money just to get married.

So the stepmonster made my gown (the only nice thing she ever did, and she did it well).  I wore a picture hat because I just didn’t want to wear a veil.  Devoted Spouse wore a lovely dark suit.  The best man looked nice in his equally dark suit and my Maid of Honor wore a light blue long gown which went well with her lovely blond hair.  The men were so serious while my Maid of Honor and I were sharing some kind of joke as I recall.

It was a fairly routine wedding as far as weddings go.  But remember earlier I mentioned a comedy of errors?  Well, the first problem we encountered was when we went to get our marriage license.  We were all the way back to my townhouse when I noticed a rather large error on the document and we had to return to the courthouse and start all over again.  Nothing would deter Devoted Spouse.

As I also mentioned we weren’t members of any particular church at the time, and so I knew a friend at work that I shared this fact with and lo and behold if her husband wasn’t an ordained minister.  Talk about a streak of luck.  We invited them over to the house for a pre-wedding minister to about-to-be-married couple counseling session.  That was the evening we discovered he had never performed a wedding before; he was a prison chaplain.  Yes, that’s what I said…a prison chaplain.  Well, crapola, we needed a preacher, the wedding was rapidly approaching and he was going to have to do.

As a matter of fact he put on a lovely wedding ceremony, using the passage from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 on love (which was popular in weddings in the 1980s).  But he was holding his bible with one hand; the other hand was in his trousers pocket.  I was so irritated I couldn’t pay attention.  I wanted to yell at him, “Get your hand out of your pocket; it looks tacky.”  Suddenly, he had to turn the page in his bible and that meant he had to take his hand out of his pocket.  Bless his heart his hand was shaking so hard he could hardly turn the page and once he got to the page he needed, that hand went right back into the pocket.  I felt bad — he was more nervous than the bride, God love him.

We made it through the ceremony.  On to the festivities.  As I remember, we stood around and ate really bad dried-out little sandwiches with the crusts cut off that stepmonster had made and stored in the refrigerator.  Of course, she hadn’t thought to put a damp tea towel over them to keep them from drying out, just some wax paper.  We gagged them down.  We ate wedding cake – the kind with the traditional plastic husband and wife figurines on top (which I may still have in a closet somewhere).  And no, we didn’t shove cake into each other’s faces; we had agreed ahead of time that was just the tackiest tradition ever and we weren’t going to succumb to such nonsense.   We had punch.  Boy did we have punch.  The boyfriend of my Maid of Honor  (whom we nicknamed Cuddles for some reason I no longer remember) thought it would be funny to raid our liquor cabinet and pour all the contents into the punchbowl – darn near killed my stepgrandmother; although I think it was one of the few times in her life she actually had fun and laughed herself silly.  We quickly made more punch.

Cuddles was no rocket scientist; the evening before the wedding he showed up at Devoted Spouse’s apartment with a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps intent on getting my hubs-to-be drunk.  I believe Devoted Spouse just shut the door in his face and ignored him.  The morning of the wedding I was upstairs getting ready when to my surprise who should burst into my bedroom but an already drunk Cuddles, announcing he was there to give me one last chance to see what it was like to be with a real man.  Gagging, I called downstairs to my future husband and my Maid of Honor to get their collective asses upstairs and get him out of my sight before someone got hurt and it wasn’t going to be me.  Maid of Honor later married Cuddles and then divorced him; again that’s another story.

We got through the reception and managed to get away from the strange collection of my stepfamily and friends who had gathered.  I changed clothes and we hopped into Devoted Spouse’s old Datsun, whose air conditioning had decided just that morning to stop working, and drove to hunt country in  Middleburg, Virginia for a lovely, romantic honeymoon.

So on June 25th 2009, I look back on many happy memories, the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve had, and all because one hot summer day I said “I do” to the world’s most tolerant loving man.

To Devoted Spouse:  Happy Anniversary sweetie – I love you more today than yesterday; less than tomorrow.