Who knew I gave birth to John Denver's Love Child?

We were shopping in Wally World and I noticed that the person on the cd Dan was holding bore a distinct resemblance to Little Man.

Don't believe me?

<===== LOOK!

Just needs circular lenses in the glasses, doesn't he?

Told you! :D

Wow, aren't they beautiful?














Flour, egg & milk, cornmeal












sizzle sizzle sizzle













Voila! Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

They were deeeee-licious. :)

You say Toe-May-Toe, I say...

...they're green! :)

For some reason, our tomato plants have a quatrillion (yes, I counted) tomatoes on their lower branches, and none on the top. Dear Dan couldn't figure out why the plants didn't seem to be getting any taller. It's cause they're weighted down, that's why!!!

So, even though they weren't quite large enough, I went ahead and picked a few. I've got a hankerin' for Fried Green Tomatoes!

Bob Barker would PLOTZ

I love my dog. I do. She's sweet, smart, listens well (most of the time). I love her.

That being said, some days I look at her and think, "What the ????"

For example, recently she has decided that boy doggies have all the fun when it comes to marking their territory and she wants in on the action. Instead of doing the usual "girl doggie squat," she leans up against the desired target and "marks" it that way. ooooooookay.

Then she decided that the neighborhood's daylilies have been ignored too long, and she started marking them, as well. ooooooookay.

This morning topped it all.

We were walking when suddenly she stopped short at a mailbox with some daylilies around it. She backed up to the daylilies. I thought, "Great, here she goes again." As I stood there waiting, I realized that I wasn't hearing the usual, erm, sounds. Instead, I heard what sounded like, "Thump... rustlerustlerustle. Thump... rustlerustlerustle."

"????"

That's when I realized that she wasn't peeing on the daylilies. She was pooping on them instead! Since the lilies were rather large and entangled, the little "deposits," if you will, would hit a stalk ("thump") and then slowly fall, bouncing off other stalks and leaves along the way ("rustlerustlerustle"). Oddly enough, the way it fell made me think of Plinko, that game on The Price is Right. You know the one -- drop the puck and it bounces from peg to peg until it lands in one of the money slots on the bottom.

This was Sadie's version. "Poop Plinko."

Bob Barker would plotz if he knew.

.

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Dreams

I've always had vivid dreams. Always. I can even remember dreams I had as a kid. They are Technicolor, Panavision, IMAX, Surround Sound, THX, HUGE honkin' dreams!

I had a really creepy one last night, and it's got me rattled.

I dreamt that I was walking on one of the miles-long bridges, like the ones in the Florida Keys. There were no cars, only people walking, and it was close to being crowded.

As I walked, I had to weave in and out of little clusters of people. Up ahead of me was a support pillar (sorry, I don't know the technical term). I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a person in a wheelchair, kind of tucked behind the edge of the pillar.

Just as I drew close, I saw a man's foot reach out and shove the wheelchair over the side of the bridge. I ran to the edge and saw that the person in the wheelchair was unconscious and bound hand and foot. The wheelchair started to sink, but the person's head was still out of the water. (No, I didn't recognize the person.)

I'm the first to admit that I am not a good swimmer. Apparently, I realized that even in my dream, so I started yelling for help. I ran up and down, grabbing people and shaking them, begging them to help me get the wheelchair out of the water, but no one paid attention. Finally, I noticed that a young man had jumped in and was trying to free the person. After a moment, I saw that he couldn't do it alone. I gave up asking other people for help and jumped into the water.

I was surprised that the water was warm. I swam over to the wheelchair and started helping the man loosen the ropes that were tied around the person's wrists, and that's when I woke up.

hmmmm.....

Zo, Dr. Freud, vat's ze diagnosis?

Is the person in the wheelchair my father? Is this my mind's way of interpreting the horrors of his daily life with Lewy Body Syndrome? The man's foot -- the one that shoved the wheelchair over the edge -- was wearing a shoe like the ones my father used to wear.

I know I feel helpless when it comes to his situation. My sister and her family are dealing with being his primary caregivers. I live too far away to do anything except be there for emotional support. I wish we lived closer, but there's nothing I can do about that. Was this dream a representation of my feelings of futility? Of the hopelessness of my father's situation? Why did I dream this dream now?

Sigh.

.

Why I was away!

Many apologies for being AWOL from the blog at the beginning of the month.

I'm sure those of you with kids realize how crazy the end of the school year can be. The last day of school in our district was June 4th. We had your usual end of the year activites, concerts, whatnot. Multiply that by two kids. That week and the week leading up to it were INSANE.

Add to the mix that I "volunteered" (a.k.a. "was drafted") to help with Project Grad at the High School, and you see where this is going.

What's Project Grad? Project Grad is an after-graduation celebration designed to keep the kids out of trouble for one last night. Around here, it is held in the high school, goes from 10:00 p.m. until 5:00 in the morning, consists of all kinds of activities, food, celebrating, and is put on by the parents on a strictly volunteer basis. It really is a big "To Do." (For my HS buddies, it's like the Gambol without the dancing, since here Prom is actually held in May.)

This year's theme was "Senior Road Trip." Parents created different destinations to which Seniors would want to take a road trip. We had:

New York, complete with a minivan where kids could play "Cash Cab" like the tv show.

Miami, with two spray-on tattoo artists doing their own rendition of "Miami Ink."

New Orleans, kitted out for Mardi Gras.

California, including Disney, Hollywood, and Graumann's Chinese Theater, with a courtyard where the kids could draw their handprints and sign their names in the "cement."

You see where we're going with this.

Guess who got to build Graumann's Chinese Theater?

I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.

The finished product ended up being 15 feet tall, constructed of 2x2's, screws, yards of cardboard, caulk and paint. I designed the thing completely in my head, without benefit of knowing what the heck I was doing. I built it in my garage in sections, because the pieces needed to be transported in my van, and also because my garage isn't 15 feet high! I created "cradles" out of wood for multiple sections of the towers to sit in so they could be easily dismantled. I made a bas relief dragon out of a 5 foot tall cardboard box and caulk. AND I probably lost four pounds of water weight since the temperature decided to be in the 90's with high humidity!

Obviously, the whole thing was a prime example of biting off more than I could chew. Dear Dan kept offering to help, but when you don't have any idea what goes where and what you're doing next, it's hard to direct other people, you know? If I had had blueprints or some sort of directions, I could have handed him page 2 and let him go from there. But since I was making it all up as I went along, that wasn't possible.

Our friend Scott called it a "design build." I think that hit the nail on the head.

Anyway, I was building in my garage for the better part of a week, and then all the parents had to come to the high school as soon as school was out in order to decorate. Some of the displays that people had made needed days and days to assemble!

Parents were in the school from about 3:00 pm on Wednesday and worked almost continuously until Saturday afternoon. My friend Mary, the head of the decorating committee, was only getting four or five hours of sleep per night and spent the rest of the time at the school. Whew!


Here's a photo of my finished product:
















The lamp-posts are over 7 feet tall, if that gives you any perspective.























The dragon was made with caulk, and then I rag painted the whole thing with paint that had actual bronze chips in it to make it look like hammered metal.























I started the cement autographs in order to encourage the students to do something similar. Look who I picked to do! :)
















Just for yucks, here's the real one (although I believe this is at Disney's MGM Studios in Orlando):



















Anyway, after all was said and done, Project Grad looked wonderful. It also had its best attendance in years -- out of 500-something seniors, more than 300 were there. That says alot!

HOWever....

I won't be doing it again. Ever. Not kidding. :)

.

Kitchen Transformation

What with all the craziness we had going on this past week, you'd think that we would try to take it easy on our down time.

Nah.

Dearest DH, in a fit of pique, "accidentally" put his foot through the wall in the kitchen.

Now, granted, we had been planning to paint the kitchen anyway, but this was truly NOT the best time to do it!

Ah, well.

Here's a really poor photo of the kitchen, taken right after we started cutting in. I forgot to take a true "Before" photo. Sorry!
















Dan asked for yellow. Something bright and sunny. Okay. I chose the color, so the results are completely my fault. It definitely is bright and sunny, but it might be just a smidgen TOO bright and sunny! O_O





































The first photo is actually closer to the true brightness than the second one. It's YELLOW!

Do you know what, though? It reminds me of my Oma Schantz's kitchen. Hers was bright yellow, too. And that's ok. :)

.

2008, A Garden Odyssey....

Imagine, if you will, the strains of "Also Sprach Zarathustra".....

dumdumdumdumdumdumdumdumduuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmm...

DAAA

DAAA

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

DADUM!

dumdumdumdumdumdumdumdumduuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmm...

Okay, you get the idea.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We

Have

ZUCCHINI!

Here's Farmer Dan, complete with uber-cheesy grin, displaying our very first harvest from our garden.






















And here is the first zucchini (I'm SURE of many!):
















I've been on my favorite scrapping discussion board, asking my pals in the Ether for recipes and advice, and they've been so helpful! As the zucchinis come in, we'll try zucchini pie, zucchini bread, mock apple crisp, zucchini in spaghetti sauce...

"...zucchini gumbo, fried zucchini, steamed zucchini..."

Ok, Forrest, you're done. :D

.

I'm still here!

In a day or two, I'll post what it is that I've been working on seemingly NON-STOP since Friday. It's got a time deadline, though, so there's no dilly-dallying allowed. But I'm still here!

Promise!
.