There I was happily having a luverly discussion with one of my most favorite classes – and then it happened.

I glanced out the door and one of our secretaries was there with the guidance counselor and one of the interns working in our school. Behind them were four old guys wearing matching suits with bright red ties.

No, I hadn’t been zapped into the Twilight Zone.

The hub found a unique way to do something for me for Valentine’s Day. He sent a  barbershop quartet to sing to me. They were so much fun. They all traipsed in, handed me roses and a card, told me that my hub sent them and proceeded to start singing.

My class was stunned and more and more people started filtering into my room to see what was going on. To say it was different is an understatement. It was delightful!

Between songs, they gave me little messages from the hubster that were all pretty damn sweet. The kids were taking pics with their cell phones, the women in the room were crying. The guys were grinning, and me? I didn’t know what to say or do.

Nobody ever told me what the proper protocal is when being serenaded by four total strangers in front of a room full of people.

I’m pretty certain that I blushed. I know I got misty eyed.

It was sweet. To be honest, it was probably one of the most touching things he’s ever done for me on Valentine’s Day.

Peace

I’m a happy little camper; a happy camper yes I am.

(think melody to Yankee Doodle when reading that – I’m singing it in my head)

Yeah yeah, I’m feeling silly today but savings oodles of money can do that to a stingy Deej.

The wedding is in three weeks. I have been putting off finding a dress to wear to the big event. I just haven’t been anticipating the thought of digging through atrociously decorated with faux pearls and gawdy sequins type dressed. I hate that shit. I hate those “mother of the bride” type dresses.

Yesterday Babycub and I went shopping for all kids of gizmos and doo-dads. She suggested I find a dress and I shuddered. I opted to use the age old excuse many women use when confronted with this particular horror “Uh, I need to shave my legs”.

Perfect.

After all, who wants to try on dresses with less than smooth gams? Not, I – that’s for sure!

With that out of the way, we continued having a marvelous day poking through one store after another. Then it happened. Some odd force drew me into a cute little boutique that I’ve never ventured into before. I found myself being pulled toward a rack of clothes and right toward this luverly printed jackety thing.

I pulled it out and asked Babycub what she thought. We both loved it. Then my face fell. My jackety thing with the fitted tank under it came with pants NOT a skirt. I sighed mightily and Babycub suggested I call the bride – my oldest daughter. If she could live with her “mother of the bride” in pants, I most certainly would be happy to prance down the aisle in this outfit of outfits. It was perfection on a hanger!

She didn’t care. She knows I’m never going to be the 50s Throwback Family that she’s marrying into. I am me. My family is unique, and I love it. We don’t fit molds.

With glee, I scampered to the dressing room to try on my treasure. It fit like it was made for me. I flounced and preened in front of mirrors, Babycub, and the sales clerks. It was “me”. I was thrilled.

I didn’t look at the price.

I knew I’d be spending a few bucks to find the perfect ensemble for this wedding. I just figured this would be pricey and that was that.

There it was – the tag.

But wait!

It was marked down.

The mark down was crossed off and marked down again.

Wait!

The marked down mark down was also crossed off and marked down again.

But wait even again!

The dress was on clearance.

After all the markdowns, they were still discounting it by 75% of the last markdown.

To sum it all up – my perfect perfect luverly delightfully make me smile and feel purdy outfit cost me ….

*drumroll*

$14.00

Yes, that’s FOURTEEN dollars.

The gods of shopping were smiling on me yesterday!

Peace

And suddenly there are boobies.

Yes, the boobie fairy has sprinkled some kind of mammary dust on my wee little girl.

My little babycub has a chest and I’m not quite ready to see her this way! Last weekend she tossed on some sweater, walked out into the living room and said “omg, mom, my boobs look like the size of Texas in this!!!”

I had to laugh and promptly texted her older sister about this so we could harass the poor little Texan in tandem. After all, if your family doesn’t give you endless amounts of shit, what good are they?

We spent the day calling her Tex while she rolled her eyes at us in utter dismay.

When her bod first began to develop she was extremely self-conscious about the whole puberty/mother nature/hormone thing. She’s accepted the inevitable – she will get boobs, pimples, periods, body hair, and all that jazz.

My house has changed. The hub and I have adjusted to the Mancub having a deeper voice, a hint of whiskers, and littlemanuppityness. Now we are moving into the moody hormonal aspect of a teen girl. Both of them at once? Really?????

Years ago when these two were little,  someone repairman was at our house and seemed rather puzzled to see the gap in the ages of our kids. The hub looked at him and said “Yeah, they are all ours. God is punishing us for something to land us with two year olds in teenagers all at the same time.”

Some days I long for those old days, but time marches on and I wouldn’t change a thing about my cubs. Okay, well, maybe she could be a wee bit less chesty – she’s being ogled by teen boys and she’s only thirteen!

Peace

I know, I know, it has been a while.

My urge to sit down and write simply flew out the window one day and the damn thing wouldn’t come back. I’ve since found a small replacement mojo and decided to scamper in here to say hello to mostest favorite blogger peeps.

Overall, life has been good for me and mine. My biggest complaint is the cold weather that has moved in and grabbed my corner of the world by the testicles. The weather dudes have promised we will actually see temps getting into the 20s next week. Perhaps, I shall thaw out by then.

I’m adding a new baby to the family soon – well sorta soon. In March or April I’ll be bringing home the little bundle of joy. It will be a girl. We haven’t completely decided on a name yet. We’re getting a Newfie! Gotcha – ha! It’s a pupster!

Once we decided to add to the fam, I began researching various breeds of dogs. Our lab is very old and won’t be with us much longer so I want another large dog. I decided to go all out and get a really really large dog.

Originally, I was going to get a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, but their short life span made me change my mind. I’d actually found a breeder and was going to be getting one in June, but now – no. Swissies rarely live past eight years – that’s just not enough time!

The Newfi will be an adventure! I told the breeder I chose that I wanted a large dog. Somewhere in the midst of that sentence, he heard something like “gigantic” dog. Female Newfies average about 120 pounds and males about 150. My pup is going to be uh above average. The mother of my new baby is 150 and the daddy is 175! This should be interesting!

I hope you all had an awesome holiday season! I’ll bebop around here soon to catch up with you.

Until then…

Peace

Life can be funny. Sometimes just when you are feeling utterly cranky and ornery, something odd happens that makes you laugh and changes your mood in the blink of an eye.

Today’s entry was going to be a rant. Before I sat down to write, one of my best friends called and I wandered out to my upper deck to rant to her while sucking down a cup of coffee. Our lab was doing her usual wander about the yard to check out the chipmunks, I was muttering to “S” on the phone, and suddenly I heard a huge thundering noise.

I ran to the edge of the deck to see if a giant herd of deer was about to invade. There were no deer. There were two rather giant horses coming at full gallop. I blinked, I blinked twice, I said to “S” – “Uh, there are horses in my yard now.”

The kids came running as well. They were in the family room when they heard the pounding of running horses. Mancub said “Mom, I think we have horses.”

I hung up the phone and we watched as the horses galloped down to our pond, ran around the lower part of the yard, then came flying back toward the house. The lab was freaking out and we quickly realized we needed to get her onto the deck with us. As we called her, the horses flew closer.

There is a narrow walkway between the upper deck and the woods and they charged toward that just as our dog was running toward us. Panic set in. I was worried my kids were about to see their beloved pooch pounded under the feet of frightened equines. Fortunately, the dog got to us before the horses got to her.

We watched as the horses continued running through our yard before they took off down the road.

There are a number of homes around here that keep horses and the kids knew exactly which one our latest visitors belonged to. We hopped into the car to let them know – they weren’t home. Their neighbors were, however, and they said they’d come horse hunting as soon as they grabbed whatever one needs to chase down a runaway horse or two.

It was a whole new experience. It was amazing to see those beautiful animals running about. I’m hoping nothing happened to them because they absolutely lightened my mood and brought a smile to my face.

Now – I’m just dreading the moment the hub sees the torn up yard that the giant critters left behind! He’ll mutter, but he has a yard roller – this will just give him an excuse to use it.

Peace

PS – Logis, I am beginning to think I live in a zoo!

When we bought this place, the hub was thrilled to have a giant detached garage where he could store his toys. The building is commonly called the “Man Cave”. In it he stores boats, 4-wheelers, the mower, snowmobiles, fishing gear, ski equipment, etc. What once looked like a giant, roomy outbuilding is fast becoming filled to the brim.

We also have a very small barn on our property. We cleaned the place out so we could use that to store patio furniture and gardening stuff – the barn is more “my” outside space. That said, I hate going in there – it’s musty, dusty, spidery, and buggy creepy – not my thing!

Our house has a two stall attached garage as well. The plan for this space (other than storing vehicles) was shelving for holiday stuff, a place to keep the trash and recycling bins, and stuff like that. Nowhere in our plan was “Mouse Condo” – yet, the little buggers have decided to make our home their home.

They have settled into the garage in alarming numbers. Mancub has become a master mouse trapper. He’s baiting, setting, and dumping the dead mice on a daily basis. It’s simply disgusting!

If that wasn’t bad enough, they little creatures discovered the closet in my sunroom! My house has three floors of living space – the sunroom and foyer are on a floor by themselves. The sunroom is one of my favorite rooms in this house – it has a lot of windows, skylights, a woodstove, our hot tub, and a gazillion plants. It’s a wonderful place to curl up in a cushy chair and read a book.

In one corner of the room is a large walk in storage closet. I keep all kinds of things in this space. This is where my mistake began – I put a small bag of bird seed in thei. The damn bag may have well been a neon sign saying “Hello Mice – The Buffet is OPEN”. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Fortunately, the rest of the house is rodent free. We’ve set traps everywhere we could think of, and all of them have remained empty. But, between the storage closet and the attached garage, I’m utterly and completely disgusted, horrified, repulsed, and cruded out.

I cannot WAIT until they are gone. In the meantime, my mighty mouse trapping son will remain hard at work.

Yuk!

Peace

Tomorrow I am running off again for a few days. I’d thought about heading to the lake, but I’m going in the opposite direction this time. I’m heading south – to farm country.

Every once in a while I like to pack up the cubs and head down to touch base with the relatives that spend their lives working the land. There are several huge farms that they own; we explore them all. They grow crops, they have dairy cattle, pigs, horses, chickens, and sheep. There are barn cats and muttlies wandering around. The kids love it.

The other day I decided it was time to go again. Whenever I do this, the hub looks at me as if I am some foreign creature. He simply cannot imagine me wearing a beat out pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a ponytail while I pitter patter around a barn or hop on a tractor. He’s never gone with me to visit the farmer relatives – he likes them a great deal, but has no desire to visit them on their home turf.

I’m taking my painted toes and fingernails. My blowdryer will be in my bag. I’ll put on my make up every morning. I always bring “me” whenever I go. The relatives down there smile indulgently. It doesn’t make any difference to them how I look when I toss on my baseball cap. They love me as I am – just as I do them.

So, while some people are heading to the beach over the weekend, I’m heading to the farm. While some of you are slipping into bikinis and splashing in the waves – I’ll be in jeans riding on a tractor. Ha! I think it sounds like fun to me. I love my every once in a while venture to the farm.

Peace

It’s official – I can no longer refer to my youngest as Babycub. It seems that overnight she’s become a young woman – complete with a chest, an eye for boys, dabbling with make up, clothes, worrying about her hair, and all that goes with those girly rites of passage.

She doesn’t see it, but she is my clone. There are so many odd little personality traits and quirks that I see that so resemble my own. My older daughter is a blend of the hub and me – this little one is pure “me” inside a much younger body.

It’s an odd feeling to see. I am constantly telling myself “let her make her own mistakes, we all have to do that” when I see her repeating the silly girl things that I’ve done myself. Advice is one thing – living my life over again through her is simply wrong. She has to spread her wings and fly.

There are some things that are different between us though. I grew up in a home with a schizophrenic mother. I never knew which way was up. I never knew when she would fly off the handle and start to physically or mentally abuse me. That sort of thing can destroy a kid’s confidence; it teaches you to be wary of the world and to walk on eggshells around people. Babycub has only known love – she has the confidence to take on the world that I have always lacked.

This confidence will take her far. Sure, she has quirky bits of “I am not pretty enough, athletic enough, etc.”, but her sense of  who she is and what she can do is strong. She will be thirteen next month, and already she is researching colleges as far away as England and Italy. She wants to fly and I know she will. Her dreams are huge, but she knows she will succeed. I’ll miss this child when she takes wing, but I’ll be proud to call her mine – no matter where she finds herself.

Until then I will savor every moment with her, or at least I will try to – those ugly teen years are ahead of us both.

For the next few years she will have to gain more confidence about her own appearance. I hate that girls tend to worry so much about this part of their lives – but it is a fact of life. That’s her weakness; she just doesn’t see herself the way the rest of us do.

The other day we were looking at old pics from my high school years. She giggled over the clothing, the hair styles, and everything else that screamed out my generation. Eventually she paused and said “Oh mom, I would kill to look like you did when you were in high school. You were so beautiful.”

I pretended to be horrified when she put that in past tense and she scrambled to backtrack the part about “used to”. It made us both laugh, but I told her that she IS beautiful and that she simply has to gain the confidence to understand what beauty truly is. It’s not just how one looks – it is what is inside.

Inside this young girl who will now be referred to as Little Miss – is a truly beautiful person that makes me proud.

Peace

The fam grew by one member last month. He was supposed to make his grand entrance late in the month, but he opted to emerge from the womb the day we returned from Montreal.

Yup, my son and his wife have done it again. I have to admit, the two of them produce some damn fine babies! We scampered home to give him a welcome and to grab my granddaughter so she could stay with us for a bit. Yet one more reason I was too busy to flip on the computer for a few weeks.

Baby, mom, and dad are all doing great. However, this “Bebe” (remember, I’m Bebe and the hub is “Hairy”  instead of being called grandma and grampa – those titles just sound so fuddy duddy) – anyway, this Bebe is feeling lonely now that my wee fifteen month old granddaughter has gone back to her own family.

For almost two weeks I got to spoil her rotten and I savored every moment. I’ve never been a huge fan of babies (I much prefer older kids that can carry on a conversation of sorts), but these wee children have stolen my heart just as my own childred did when they were that age.

While she stayed with us, she was delightful. She’s taller than my own babies were at that age and I’ve discovered something fantastic about that. Taller babies and shorter bebes can easily walk hand in hand as they explore the world together. I loved those moments when she and I would just wander the yard while she marveled at the simplest of things. Blades of grass, shiny stones, flowers, and low hanging branches made her giggle.

As for the little guy – he’s gorgeous. I’ve spent time cuddling him, rocking him, and just staring into his eyes. Later this month, I’ll be taking both of them for a night. That should be an adventure!

Peace

Who knew a family vacation would start out with what has become an unsolved mystery involving a roadblock and a very dead body?

Day one in Montreal – the hub opted to sleep like a slug so the cubs and I decided to head out to explore the area around our hotel. We were in a fantastic spot – right between Sherbrooke and St. Catherine – two absolutely luverly streets in the heart of downtown.

We wandered for a bit, then went back to see if the sleepy slug decided to join the land of the living. As we neared our hotel, we could see the street was swarming with police. As we got closer it became obvious that whatever happened was on the side street next to our abode. To get into our hotel meant having to go through the police tape while showing our hotel key so they knew we weren’t simply gawking tourists.

When we got onto the elevator we were joined by a hotel employee and a police officer – both of whom were extremely quiet as the cubs and I glanced at each other with apprehensive looks. As soon as we got into our room we dashed to our balcony to see what was transpiring on the street below and there they were – those creepy silver tarps covering something ‘orrible below.

The hub was in the shower and the cubs swarmed him when he emerged from the bathroom.

“Dad, there are dead bodies outside the room!”

He gave me a “yeah right” look, then went out onto the balcony for a personal opinion. I peeked over from my chair to see him shaking his head and saying “Uh, there really are bodies covered out there.” Duh, I may be livin’ in a small town in the middle of nowhere, but I have seen enough cop shows to recognize something like this. It was bad.

While we waited for him to spritz and dress we occasionally wandered to the patio to see what was happening below. Yeah, it sounds gruesome and intrusive – but I’ll admit – we looked. It was one of those things that your head tells you is wrong to gawk at, but the morbid curiousity inside just grabs ya’ and you can’t stop wondering what happened.

One person was on the sidewalk below us and another in the middle of the street. There were shoes laying there in the street as well, but there was no car around to indicate there’d been a pedestrian hit. It became our own little mystery. What happened outside our window in the short while the cubs and I explored the city nearby?

Eventually, the bag in the middle of the road was removed – there was no body beneath it. Instead, it appeared to be parts of the body that was laying on the sidewalk. Men came and picked up random pieces of the poor person that was dead and, eventually, the person was taken away.

For the rest of our visit we avoided walking past the spot on the sidewalk that was covered with some kind of substance put down to absorb whatever couldn’t be picked up. We watched the news to try to learn more about the accident – nothing was covered.

My only guess is that it was a jumper. I’d seen other news stories involving a person hit by car the day before our person, but nothing was said about the body outside my hotel.

I’ve searched online to no avail. It’s as if we imagined the entire thing – yet I know something happened.

As for the rest of the vacation, we enjoyed. We explored museums. We at fantastic food. We wandered through the funky neighborhoods that make up Montreal. We went jet boating on the Lachine Rapids.

There was one bit of a spat. I’m a huge fan of Cirque de Soleil and they were actually in their hometown while I was there. Their giant yellow tents were impossible to miss and I let the cubs and hub talk me into checking on available seats for one of their shows. The only thing available was premier seating – that meant big bucks – way more big bucks than I was willing to pay.

They knew how much I’d wanted to see Cirque someday and they all began nagging at me to bite the bullet and splurge on the show. How weird to be saying “no” to something I wanted so badly to people who had no real interest in going themselves. In any case, I couldn’t justify dropping about $600 to $700 for something I’d not anticipated or budgeted for. I have no regrets.

Whew – long post.

In any case, that’s one bit of why I haven’t been online for a bit.

Peace