We Survived!

The best part (if there is one) about Hurricane Irene is that she arrived after I went to sleep and for the most part she was pretty much gone when I woke up. The nasty high winds lasted long after the rain stopped though. We have a lot of tree limbs down and there are leaves all over the yard, but other than that everything seems to be OK. We never lost power, although my daughter did.

My first duty this morning was to go downstairs and check the basement and make sure it was still dry. After what happened to us back in 2008, I don't want to take any chances.

All the cats outside found shelter somewhere, with a lot of them hanging out in the greenhouse. And that included the latest kitten that is around two weeks old. The cats were my biggest concern when I heard nasty Irene was going to sail over our house for a bit.

First the earthquake, then a hurricane...now I am left to wonder what is next for this little corner of the world. Any ideas? No, don't tell me. I worry enough as it is.

What Next?

First an earthquake and now a hurricane. I don't know which way to turn. Dear me. I think I will climb into bed, snuggle under the covers, and stay there till sometime next week.

 Every living thing in this house (one person, three cats) will just have to help themselves because I do not like storms of any kind. Especially those that have wind and rain in them. No way, no how...I never did like the name Irene. And I don't mean to offend anyone with that name who is reading this now. I apologize. But I still don't like it.

Earthquake!

As I sat at the dining room table reading the newspaper and having a cup of coffee, my chair was being attacked it seemed. My biggest cat, Junior, usually bullies that chair and I thought he was just doing his normal thing of putting his paws at the seat edge and pushing. I told him to stop and when he didn't I looked down and all around the chair and he wasn't there. But the chair was still being pushed.

It was one of those hmmmmm moments. I looked up at the chain hanging from our overhead fan and it was dancing and jumping back and forth. But the fan was on and I thought that may be the cause of the chain's movement. Finally, I looked at my philodendron plant and the leaves were waving like a small gust of wind went through the plant. It was at that very moment when the hmmmmm became WTF.

OK, so we have huge quarries in our area with one behind our house. It's far enough away but when they blast we can feel it slightly rock the ground. But never like what I was feeling today. It felt, actually, like something big was outside the house and pushing it back and forth...so I stuck my head out the front door to see if perhaps a car kissed the house. Or maybe the Jolly Green Giant was in town and nobody told me. Nope. I then walked from room to room looking out each window to see the cause of the movement and still saw nothing.

Giving up, I sat back down and continued on with my paper and coffee. Ten minutes later the phone rang. It was my daughter. She said she had just gotten up from a long nap when her phone rang. It was her boyfriend's father calling her to tell her we just had an earthquake. Wow, I never gave that one a thought. That would have been my last guess.

I've never experienced an earthquake. Older than dirt and yet the dirt has never moved me.

I checked it out on the computer and sure enough, we had a 5.9 'quake that emanated from Virginia and was felt as far north as Rhode Island and even into parts of Canada. They are saying on the news channels that this was the strongest one we've had in a hundred years. Gosh, I feel honored.

Great Game

41-13, NY Giants beat the chicago Bears.

The King Is Dead...Burger, That Is

I'm a grown-up (at least I think I am), but BK's mascot always scared the you-know-what out of me. Especially when he appeared in their TV commercials within the past year. I'm not sad to see him go, not in the least.

I always thought he was a deterrent rather than a plus in their advertisements and always questioned the Madison Avenue commercial gurus that elevated him to such extremes.

I have always preferred BK over Mickey D's and I still do. But since I stopped eating fast food hamburgers due to their fat content, not to mention crazy calories, my preference as to where we go for a quick bite to eat has changed.

Now, it's whichever place is closest when the hungries hit us.

So, goodbye King, your time has come and you are finally gone. I won't miss you.

To Grill Or Not To Grill

There wasn't a week gone by that we never had food on the grill at least once. Sometimes it was a couple times during the week, too. But that was when I could go out to the deck through the patio doors to get to the grill. Not anymore. The doors have plastic sheeting on the outside and the inside has duct tape all around it. Welcome to my world!

Those things were done before winter set in. It seems a lot of cold air was coming in via the windows and all around the casing, too. So my husband did a quick fix. And now he figures it will keep the hot air out during the summer. Winter is looming ahead with nothing being done one way or the other. But I digress...

I was fairly happy I could no longer get to the grill because to be honest with you, I was getting tired of grilling. And I certainly wasn't going to be checking on the stuff on the grill while it was cooking by going out the front door and walking around the side of the house to get to the back yard where the grill was. That's asking an awful lot of me.

Of course, I could still grill in the driveway and pretend I was a redneck. Did I just write that? I don't mean to offend, because I would do that if I really wanted to and not think anything of it. I just don't want to grill anymore.

What I'm really getting at here is I will use every excuse in the book so I don't have to cook on the grill. Why, you ask? It's simple ~ after doing it all my married life (it all started with a hibachi) I finally put my foot down and said enough. Grilling, to me, is a man's job. Most men I know love to grill. My father always did it, my brother and most other men in my immediate family all take to the grill like a duck takes to water. So how did I get stuck with doing it, not only in my first marriage but my second one also.

And so another chapter in my life comes to an end. Since my husband has never grilled his entire life, I'm the one that is the loser with my choice to stop doing it. And the German part of me refuses to start doing it once again. It's been quite a few years since I wielded a spatula over a grill and I am not about to start again. I will quit while I am ahead.

On the other hand...if I had something like this I just might change my mind. I said might, so don't get too excited:

Sons of Anarchy Season 4

This is my all-time favorite show besides Rescue Me (last season this year) and Justified which will not return until early next year for the third season. I was glad to see Timothy Olyphant was nominated for an Emmy for Justified.

Back to Sons of Anarchy:
When we left Jax Teller at the end of Season 3, this is what he looked like:

Pretty scruffy, huh?
And this is what he will look like when Season 4 begins on September 6th:

I will admit, I was a little shocked when I first saw his new 'do but the longer I looked at him, the more I liked him. He cleans up pretty nicely.

From what I have read, 14 months have passed from the last season to the start of this season and since the boys were in the slammer, Jax decided to go short while incarcerated. That was for the show, but I think the haircut was the result of a movie he did and he had to have shorter hair.

Either way, he looks yummy to me.

I Have One Child And I Am Blessed

When I was growing up I never could relate to kids. As I got older into my 20's, that didn't change much. Until my sister had her first daughter. Then I wanted one too. And I wanted one right that very minute. Yes, I was married at the time. We weren't exactly the picture-perfect couple and we did have our moments, but I didn't care...I wanted my very own little girl.

She did't come easy. Her father had problems. His little swimmers weren't exactly Olympic champions. So off to the hospital I went to have a device inserted to help those little swimmers get to where they needed to go and do their business. There was nothing wrong with my innards, but his were very questionable. To make a long story short, I had an operation so I could have children. But I only wanted one child. And it had to be a girl. I was given three months for it to happen. And happen it did...at the last possible moment of the last month.

Back then we weren't privy to what sex the child would be. We had to rely on the needle test or some other crazy voodoo way of trying to tell what it would be. I always said it had better be a girl because if I had a boy I would leave him at the hospital. And I wasn't kidding. I didn't think I had it in me to raise a boy. Besides, I wasn't planning on staying with the father.

And so, seven years after she was born, I left him. I walked away from a 3 bedroom brick ranch home that we built and had almost paid off. But that wasn't important to me. I needed to keep my sanity and also feared for my life. For those seven years I walked on eggs. He kept a shotgun in the house and only he knew where the bullets were. Eventually I got up the nerve to leave and in the middle of the night, while he was out drinking, we did just that.

I raised her on my own for the next eight years until the both of us were rescued by the man I am married to now. A saint and a savior.  He helped me raise my daughter through the toughest years:  the teens.  We must have done something right because she turned out absolutely fine.

My little baby girl is no longer little or a baby. But she is the only one I have because that's all I ever wanted. The Lord blessed me in many ways and I am very thankful for that. 

We're Off To See The Vet Today *Updated*

Doesn't she look nice and peaceful? She won't be that way once I get her in the softside carrier and we are on our way to the vet. She will whine and caterwaul like the dickens from the time we pull out of the driveway till we walk in the door at the vet.    Once we're inside she calms down right away.

She carries on like someone is torturing her. It hurts my ears. I have no idea where she thinks she's going and what we're going to do to her. Other than the shot she will be getting, this should be a breeze for her. Where do they get the idea we are taking them to some nasty place anyway?  Like I would ever do that...or even think of it.   

And we get to do this all over again in another month when Punkin' has his appointment. But he's easy. Yes, he cries, but because of his lack of vocal cords, it's not half as bad as Dakota and her wailing.

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We almost didn't make the vet appointment today due to Dakota not wanting to get into the carrier. I had her in but she jumped out just that quickly. And the chase was on. Her first safe place to hide is under one of the sofas and there are three of those to choose from. First it was in the family room. I pulled everything to the middle of the room and that is when she ran into the living room where there is a three-seater and two-seater. Back and forth, back and forth...till I was frazzled beyond belief.

To make a long story short I was able to corner her and get her into the carrier. But by then the appointment was less than five minutes away and it is a 10-15 minute drive to the vet. I called ahead and they weren't sure about taking us and wanted to reschedule for later this afternoon. Not wanting to go through what I did already, I talked them into taking us because I assured them we would be there within ten minutes or less. And we were. And Dakota sang all the way to the vet and then all the way home. I think she is practicing for American Idol or maybe that new show, The Voice. She'd win, hands down.