Yesterday and the Key Party -

That's right,  Key Party (kee-par-tay) n. a non-political party involving family 

               members of the people who lost the Volkswagon Beetle key.

Yesterday Bobbi came out to hang out and caused me to stop all my running from thing to thing and go lay out on the dock with her and get some much needed sun and conversation. First we ate the Jimmie John's that she brought out for lunch. We sat out on the deck in the sunshine and talked with Bryan.

 While sitting out there my phone rang and it was the locksmith calling 

to tell Bryan that she had tried making a key from the passengers side handle and 

HALLELUJAH, IT FIT THE IGNITION. 

So for $20 we have the keys to the VW. 

Bryan went back in to get the car. 

Bobbi and I went to lay out.

Neither of us had glasses on so it was hard to see how this picture turned out...

Bryan came home and declared that we needed to all go out to eat to celebrate the keys.

So we went to South Chargrill and had a key party.

Fortunately, Jayme could join us.

P.S. Bobbi and I laid out for 2 hours. Her comment, 

"Mom, this is the longest you have stuck with something all day." 

We had a good laugh about that.

Diagnosis - Positive -

I have self diagnosed this morning and come to the conclusion that I have what I like to call, at this time of year, "Esprit ADD". I documented this with a couple photos to show you what I mean.

I will walk you through this with quotes from what I am thinking while all this was going on.

 "Let's see, I need to make some cookies for Esprit on Wednesday." 

So I get out my supplies and lay them on the counter.

"Oh, first I need a cup of coffee" 

So I start that.

Then while that was making, this thought,

"I need to empty the dishwasher and get these dirty dishes out of my way"

So I open the dishwasher and find a measuring cup and the paddle to my mixer that I need for the cookies. 

"That reminds me, I need the trays and racks for the cookies"

So I walk away leaving a half empty dishwasher.

So I go lay them on the cupboard they are in and that is next to the office so I remember that I need to answer an email from lady about Esprit so I go do that.

 As I am answering that I think,

"I need a cup of coffee, I should go make one"

And when I got there remembered that I ALREADY HAD...

In there somewhere I threw in a load of laundry.

Then Bryan needed me to stop what I was doing 

{running around like a chicken with it's head cut off not accomplishing anything}

and help him do this BECAUSE WE LOST THE KEYS TO THE VW.

He is taking it to the locksmith to have them re-key the ignition. 

And it is only 10 a.m.

Fortunately, I have the rest of the day to finish all the things I started. 

Still need that cup of coffee...

And in the midst of all that non-accomplishment I am blogging about my problem thereby confirming the diagnosis mentioned at the beginning of this nonsense.

I will have a miracle healing in about 2 weeks. 

Don't even worry or send flowers. 

Ok, send flowers, if you must, just don't worry.

Rearranged Office -

Looking for the VW keys yesterday resulted in me tearing out everything in the office and then since it was all torn up anyway I decided to rearrange the furniture. Done...except for the pile of stuff that I need to go through on the dining room table and getting a few baskets to store stuff in and a lamp for the table by the chair...

3000 Feet of Food Service Film Later...

{I can hear the conversations now..."Harold! get in here, now she's blogging about PLASTIC WRAP! She's insane, I tell you what." "Calm down, Bertha, you must be mistaken...what in the world, why would anyone blog about plastic wrap? Let me see that." and so on.}

But this is about my plastic wrap, or lack there of.

I have had this container of plastic wrap since the summer of 2005. 

When I worked at Papa D's, Mick thought I needed this and a foil at my house.

It has been on the shelf in my kitchen pantry day and night, always ready to lend it's clingy goodness to any plastic wrap cover need - new tattoo that needs protecting, no problem. Counter needs to be covered for a painting project, no problem. Can't find the lid to that container, no problem. Foodservice Film was on the job. Last night I was covering a cake that I made for Charity's Police Academy Graduation and Jayme and I watched as the last of the 3000 feet of film peeled off the roll. Taps started to play in my head and I almost shed a tear. So long, old friend, I am sure your partner, Foodservice Foil, {he is my second one, so I am not quite as attached to him, but...} will soon follow after and then I shall have to become like other folks and buy small ones at the store...

Agony.

Storm, Toad, Moth...Nature-

This storm rolled in last night and caused Nebraska to be on Fox News a lot.

Tornadoes everywhere, except my house for which I am grateful.

Been there, done that, hope it never happens again.

 He is hard to see but this toad (just for you, Ashley) is enduring Oliver checking him out.

I miss Ashley walking into the house shuddering because she almost or did step on a toad on the driveway.

And this fella. He must have just hatched because he wasn't able to even take off when I pulled the weed that he was sitting on. Look how huge he is compared to my hand in this picture. Actually, a very beautiful moth.

Of Volkswagon keys and Christmas Trees...

We have lost the Volkswagon keys.

Great...there was only one set.

We have searched everywhere except where they are apparently.

Bryan, in his desperation to find them, asked me the other day if maybe since we got it around Christmas time did I think it would be cute to hang the keys on the Christmas tree and then forget and pack them up with the ornaments...

Can NOT believe I forgot this -

A week ago I drove in from Esprit rehearsal on Sunday evening and this was the exact scene I saw when I turned the corner onto the dam road - 

Tom Christie taking a picture of Bryan with a nice almost 5and1/2 lb. bass.
(I have been corrected) {twice}

Of course, since I had my camera with me in the car, 

I snapped a couple pictures from the dam.

Walnut, Iowa...Antique City -

Every Father's Day weekend the town of Walnut, Iowa hosts a huge antique fair. they close down two of the main streets and people set up booths and tons of people come to see what there is for sale. Bryan and I have gone several times. Jayme came with us this year.

I took these two pictures because the glass at this booth was arranged in rainbow color order and in the bright sunshine it was beautiful.

I took a picture of this sign because Ashley and Jill always call me "Patterz" or something like "Patz"  

 Funny story: This is yesterday and I just randomly took a picture of Jayme at this booth.

Then today Jayme said "I saw a little pink bottle like the kind I am looking for at a booth yesterday and I liked it but I don't remember where it was." Then we found the booth and it turns out it was this one that I took a picture of her at and it is the very pink bottle she is setting down. She got the bottle today.

Really?  

 They are looking at a dog gas mask.

 In the left hand corner Jayme is posing so it looked like I was taking a picture of her...I wasn't.

You see a lot of this sort of thing there. Or dog strollers...and I don't mean dogs that are strolling along. I mean a stroller made for a dog. Jayme and I decided that none of these people mind being called "Mommy" when they take their dogs to the vet.

I am really not crabby in this picture. Just super tired. This is our load on the way home. 

 I had Jayme sit up front so she could run her Ipod and not have to deal with the load in the back.

 These are the little things I found that I liked. 

Yes, I did buy some cookie cutters...why?

And these 5 bar stools that were taken from an F. W. Woolworth's and are the exact same stools that were in the Greensboro, NC Woolworth's that was the scene of the sit-in for equality in the south in 1960. Two pink and two light green ones are displayed in the Smithsonian. We didn't know that when we bought them. We just knew they were out of a Woolworth's in California. We are going to use them at the counter in our dining room.

Jill came out...

and we talked.

Jill is left handed. We were fixing Jake's short's pockets. Finally we resorted to ironing on some purple fabric {we thought he would like that} and Jill hand sewing them, ripping that out and hand sewing them again so it didn't show. We also laughed a lot and I talked to Ashley on the phone. We left our faces out of the pictures because that is what Ashley does when she doesn't shower or fix her hair. 

 We made cookies and tried different cutters that I have.

Jill ate an apple to prevent her from eating the dough...

 She showed me Pinterest and we discussed recipes. 

We looked at blogs that we like.

I finished up a project that needed to be done.

We packed up all the stuff that is going to Spain with her on Tuesday. {I am jealous of that, just a little, but so excited for Ashley and Jill}

And laughed at ourselves because we went from one thing to the next like ADHD people on too much caffeine. 

And I was grateful that Ashley has such a good friend as Jill, who comes out and spends the day messing up my clean kitchen with me, because it makes it feel like Ashley was around for the day.

I heard a noise -

I went out to the car to get a bag that I needed and when I got there I remembered that I wanted to clean out my trunk so I took everything out of it and then realized that the inside needed a good cleaning too because the kids sort of drop things and the back of the front seat and the dashboard are perfect places to rest their feet and sometimes there is mud so anyway...one thing led to another and I was just cleaning away out there when I heard a noise. I thought it was Oliver but then I realized when I went to throw some stuff from the car away that it was in the garbage can out there. Generally, I do have my camera somewhere on me and this time it was in my apron pocket so I snapped a picture of the guilty party.

Then I dumped him into a garbage bag and took him out to the big garbage can. Shades of the hamster that I threw away once...Sometime I may tell you that story. It's a good one. Oh, fine...
Once, way back when we lived on Stonecliffe Dr., the girls stayed with Grandma while Bryan and I went on a trip. Now Grandma feels the way I feel, only 10 times stronger, about rodents so the fact that she took Jayme to Earl May and let her look at the hamsters says a lot. We get back home and Jayme {about age 7 or 8} talks us into letting her get a hamster. So then we have to get the cage and it is the kind that you can attach tubes to and other houses and it just kept growing. It lived in the basement. All our bedrooms were upstairs and down the hall. Every night it was in its cage with the doors shut tightly. In the morning, Jayme's clothes in her drawers were chewed and there was little paper bits everywhere but the hamster was in it's cage with the doors shut and everything in its place. So MYSTERIOUS. Time passes and one night Ashley yells from her room. Something to the effect of "THE HAMSTER IS IN MY ROOM", that type of thing. So we catch the hamster and put it back where it belongs. Mind you, when we went to put it back all the doors are shut the tubes are all attached, etc. Weird. So I got drastic. I duct taped the doors shut, wrapped duct tape around tubes where they connected and in general made the thing a fortress of duct tape. There will be no more escaping. A couple days go by and I am sound asleep in our room, the door is shut and I feel something scurry across my face. I sit up quite quickly and there is the hamster ON MY PILLOW just staring at me. It is midnight, it is January, it is below zero outside but I got up, grabbed the pillowcase {which the hamster had scurried into}went downstairs, dumped the hamster into the cage which, by the way, was still all duct taped and shut, picked up the entire twisty tube cage concoction and went out the garage and around the side of the house and dumped it into the big garbage can. Washed my hands, got a new pillowcase, shuddered a few times, went back to bed. In the morning Jayme said, "Hey, where's my hamster?"

"IN THE GARBAGE OUTSIDE." said the mother 

"WHY?" 

"Because, I won't spend one more night having him run across my face. If he wants to be free so bad he can just be free at the dump." said the heartless mother. 

"Can I go see" 

"Sure, just don't ask me to bring it back in" said the still heartless mother

Three sub-zero days later 

{of course I threw it away right after the garbage had been collected}

Bryan went out to throw some garbage into the can and there, sitting on top of the other stuff we had thrown in on top of the cage all week, was the hamster, just staring up at him. 

Heartless again said, "I don't care, he's not coming in this house again."

There are those who say that he is still at the dump gaining weight and strength so that he can come and have his revenge on me someday. 

I say, "Bring it, hamster, and you will join the deer on my basement wall."

Oliver! seriously...

I am just sitting here having a cup of coffee at 5:45 in the morning.

Then this happened.

Oliver, very excited that he had found this old toy, jumped up on the couch and tossed it to me to play fetch. I think maybe I will get a clean cup of coffee...

I wouldn't do that if I were you...

This is what I said to Reddy this morning when he {yes, he} 

CROWED very loud when I went outside.

That is him, to the left of the blonde chick. He hangs out with her the most. 

Guess blondes do have more fun... 

Probably the other chicks make blonde jokes behind her back...

She will miss Reddy 

{or ReAdy, as in "ready to eat" Bryan says}

Not sure I can go there...he has a name.

Relax? It's the weekend!

Friday the kids came out to stay the night so that their parents could have a little time to celebrate their 10th Anniversary. We stayed busy.

So we rode the lawn tractor...

 Climbed on the corral fence to look at the horses and gathered the eggs and climbed back up to look again...

 Went down by the pond, sat on the new bench,

 Walked back up to the house. Got drinks of water and sat on the front porch and played with the dogs while we waited for Amiah's friend, Amani, to arrive.

 Made donuts for breakfast, rode the trike all over the house, played golf at 7:30 a.m. and played on the swing.

Decorated sugar cookies

 Watched a movie and had a mandatory rest time.
  I for one am exhausted today. But we had a wonderful time and got so much fun packed into those two days.