The blunderous wonders of a 3 day weekend

Happy Memorial Day, everyone.  Thank you is not quite enough for those who have served, for those who have died, and for the families of both.  The words are paltry, but if we had others to use, I would use them to show the gratefulness of the sacrifices that you all have given.  

In celebration of this holiday, we usually take a trip up north.  It is still too cold to waterski (although I think in past years I may have eeked out a trip), and if I had to guess, I'd say the water was about 40 degrees.  Maybe 50.  Either way, it's the kind of cold that makes you suck in involuntarily and hurts - and if your head dares to dip below, you get the top of head frozen headache.  If you haven't ever been in that kind of water, you really should do it, not because it's fun or anything, rather mostly just to prove you are not a pansy.  

This weekend was no exception.  We did have to find a way to pack baby chicks in a couple bins to take them with us on our excursions (really not super recommended, but what can you do) as well as pack the dog (all in the same truck bed).  A stop on the way over to the feed store for some pine shaving bedding and we could almost convince my parents that chickens don't smell like horrible, filthy livestock.  (They still do.  Please, I love you, chicks, but please can you get out of my house yet?)  

I thought that I would go for a trail run the evening that we arrived - I love the path that takes me up (and I do mean vertically) through the woods, over to some sand hills, and then juts back in past a cedar swamp.  It is nice to have a different path and scenery (even if "running" up a sand hill has the same pace as walking up a sand hill).  I took the diseased dog with me, partly because she loves running and partly because every time I mention I am going to go on this trail, my mother tells me that it is entirely probable that I am going to be eaten by a bear and I figure bears would maybe rather eat a dog than me, so let's give them some menu options.  

I thought that I would go a bit longer on this run (after sitting in the car for 3-4 hours, I had plenty of stored energy), so I ran past the house after the trail run and down to the end of the road (1.1 more miles away).  I was totally down with this and tearing up the pace, but the dog was not really on board with me.  Soon, it seemed that I was dragging her behind me.  Yes.  I was dragging a dog.  This is much more unpleasant than I want it to be, what remedy is there?  I could just loop her leash over a post or tree or something and let her rest while I go to the end of the road (she would still be in sight).  Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.  There's hardly any people up here anyway.  

That looks like a good place!  I hooked her to a post on one of the last and vacant driveways and told her to sit and stay.  I ran off, gloriously faster (no 50 pound dead weight yanking my arm backwards), and turned around at the end.  I could see the small shape of the black dog sitting and waiting for me.  I got about 100 yards further and the dog started to bark the bark of alarm.  What?  What is the problem?  Why would she be barking like that...and she is turned sideways aiming at the house?  Oh great.  I couldn't run fast enough.  (As a side note, sprinting and yelling at a dog simultaneously is a great way to burn a lot of calories, but a quick way to get out of breath.)  Come on, teleporter, make me get up there.  Why hasn't someone invented a teleporter yet? (Seriously, someone needs to get on that.)  

A woman was approaching the dog, walking down her driveway, somewhat meekly as my dog was in full going-to-kill-you bark mode.  She turned short and began her evening walk.  I sprinted my guts off and debated - do I run past her and say, "Oh hi, this is my dog, I thought nobody lived here, and my dog was really tired, so I just wanted her to rest while I was running to the end..."  Explaining always sounds worse, so I just unhooked the dog and sprinted past her waving and smiling instead.  She can imagine whatever she wants, I guess.  On the way home, I learned a new way to breathe while running - it was to put my tongue on the bottom of my top teeth so I could avoid swallowing gallons of bugs (I learned this too late as I probably ate an entire protein bar's worth of bugs on that run).  

Finally, we made it home.  Now I can just take a shower and chillax, maybe read my new book about Elizabeth I.  Perfect - minus the bug sandwiches and the dog fiasco.  Except, wait.  Where are my clean underwear?  No seriously.  I unpacked my entire bag.  I have plenty of socks, 4 pairs of shoes, a plug for my ipod, I even brought Sovereign Silver and P73 Orega-Resp just in case of weird emergency.  And no underwear.  You have got to be joking me.  Awesome.  I guess my undies get a shower, too.  

Sunday was filled with a coma-like nap, the kind that you know you should be getting up because you probably slept so long it's dinner now, but when you try to open your eyes, you feel drugged and dizzy, but you are so determined to get up that you throw your legs over the side of the bed/couch and start walking...over to another place that you can lay down and go back to sleep for a while.  This is unfortunately periodically interrupted by your spouse who keeps sarcastically and dramatically asking you if you are okay, and if something is wrong with you, and purposely loud enough so that your mother hears, who will really actually think you are sick and start bombing you with questions about your health when all you want to do is alternate between punching your husband with his sarcastically amused expression (at the success of getting your mother involved) and actually going back to your sleep coma.  Monday has to be better.  

Except at 4:30 a.m. you wake up to the worst pain in your elbow ever experienced by humans on earth and conclude that you are dying of a black widow or brown recluse spider bite.  The elbow looks like a swollen freakshow and bending or not bending it makes you wish you knew how to do self-amputation.  But wait!  There is danger!  Perhaps that spider is still in the bedding.  I must wake my husband and save his life.  "Honey, I think I just got bit by a venomous spider.  It might still be here!"  

Hubby grumbles, "What?  What do you want me to do?"  

"We need to get up and check!"  

Hubby, "What?!  Didn't you do this like a few months ago and there was no spider?"  

Me, "Seriously!  Are you even talking about that!?  No, I don't recall that.  Just get up, I'm turning on the light."  On goes the light.  He appears half awake.  I am full-blown awake and on a mission to eradicate death spiders, ripping covers and pillows off, onto the floor, but then worrying that the spider already escaped to the floor and is now under the bedding and will likely bite me again.  I sit up in bed.  My hair falls onto my arm, and I do a freak out dance.  "Please can you look up spider bites on your phone?"  

"Right now?  Let me see your elbow.  It doesn't look like a spider bite."  

"Well what the heck else do you think I would wake up suddenly from in the middle of the night in excrutiating pain from?!  It has to be!"  I plod downstairs to get an ice pack for my pathetic pain.  

Hubby, "Google says you could have MRSA.  That is so gross, and I'm laying in bed with you."  

WHAT?!  "First of all, no, I do not have MRSA.  And secondly, what did you just say?  I am probably dying of a brown recluse bite and you're accusing me of having MRSA!"  Finally, after an hour or so, I fall back to sleep (hubby had no problem with that and was at snore level 3 within minutes), cuddling with an ice pack and dreaming of spiders and snake bites.  As morning dawns, I look at it, hoping it is better, but it is worse.  I want to go home and get activated charcoal.  Why don't my parents have weird things in their medicine cabinet?  My mom and dad bring me epsom salt, and my mom suggests that a wasp stung me.  Mom, a wasp?  It was 4:00 in the morning.  Well, it could be, she says.  Dad looks at it, he thinks he sees something.  I soak my arm in epsom salt in the sink and decide I am probably going to die so I should either pack up and rush home (3-4 hour drive) or go the opposite way, into town, to the urgent care/emergency room.  But which one?  I call the emergency room.  They tell me that they can't give me medical advice over the phone.  Thank you.  Awesome.  

I resign myself to my death and tell hubby we probably should go into town to the ER (especially after hearing that my friend's daughter went into shock and delerium from her brown reculse bite).  Upon hearing this, the littles cry out, "Are you going to die, Mom!?"  Well, I hope not, I say, trying to be brave.  I will probably survive, I lie to child #1.  This is very concerning to them because I would only subject myself to traditional allopathic medicine under dire life and limb circumstances and here I am suggesting we go.  As we drive to town, I suggest to my husband that this is our anniversary date.  He laughs.  I wonder if I can get flowers out of this.   

After answering the question, "Do you work?" to the urgent care receptionist with "Well, not really.  Unless you want to buy some Norwex.  I have some here in my purse.  Would you like to see a demo?" I am satisfied that I could entertain myself sufficiently here.  She tells me that there will be an hour wait and I ask her if she would like to take a bribe of some Norwex and bump me up a few people.  For some reason, she just laughs.  Oh well, I tried.  

We finally get in to the room where we are going to see the PA or whatever he is and he walks in with stylish dark rimmed glasses and says he is from California and that I probably do not have a spider bite.  I am scowling inside with disdain.  Not have a spider bite!  Like I believe you!  And then he tells me that people come in everyday saying they have spider bites.  What EVER.  He suggests antibiotics and NSAIDs.  I filter that through my head as "Sovereign Silver and turmeric".  He comes down with the diagnosis (not a spider bite, I'm so sure) - bursitis of the elbow.  What am I, like 65?  Bursitis?  He says I should wear a sling and I make a face with wild eyebrows.  "You're totally not going to wear a sling, are you?"  Well, no.  I will tie myself up with an ace bandage when I get back, though.  

Sigh.  Memorable vacations.  

Peace, love, and I can't wait until 4th of July, 
Ms. Daisy

New! Try Dog Bag!

Are you tired of sweeping and vacuuming thirty times a day?  Do you wish you could shave your dog bald just to rid yourself of all the gobs and piles of dog hair that curl up like stray tumbleweeds in the corners of every single room?  Do you find dog hair in places that makes you scream your eyes off?  

Get ready for freedom and joy with the new Dog Bag!  Simply trim to size for the legs and tail, and tie it up around the neck, and you're all set!  

No more shedding on your clean floor!  It collects inside the bag so you can just dump it out in the wind outside.  Environmentally friendly - the birds can now have cozy nests with the amount of hair you're flinging to the wild!  

No more backbreaking work of sweeping, scrubbing, and vacuuming like you're Cinderella on crack.  With Dog Bag you can sit down and enjoy your evenings!  

Imagine: no more finding stray dog hairs on towels, couches, carpets, coats, clothing, or embedded into the hideous stair carpets!  Your life will instantly break out in the hit song from Annie, "Easy Street", as you waltz around your home, mocking at your now rarely used broom!  

Dog Bag comes in packs of 60 for only $14.99!  Go to your favorite retailer and demand that they carry the original, the best, the only: Dog Bag!

(Note to panicked people who love dogs more than their own eyesight: No animals were hurt in the making of this advertisement. Dog wore Dog Bag for about three minutes to take a picture and was positively reinforced for her "prettiness" throughout the experience - although I would have liked to try it out for a good 24 hours.  If you'd like to "rescue" my dog from me and what you perceive as inhumane treatment, please email me and I will send you off with all the supplies you need, minus the $150 a month for special food and drugs for her EPI disease.  Local pick up only, and a short interview required.  Thank you for your concern.  The world is a better place now.)

I repeat: do NOT get a dog. Part 8,000,000

Let's say you've got company coming over tomorrow night.  Let's say they've not been to your house before.  Let's say they live in Nicelandia and you live in Raton Rouge.

What, pray tell, will happen?  

a) your dog will poop all over the kitchen floor on Saturday morning (before anyone is awake)
b) your dog will poop all over the basement steps and they are carpeted  
c) your dog will poop up the walls and on your stove
d) your dog will poop 100% pure liquid
e) your dog will poop only on carpeted areas avoiding the 80% uncarpeted, 50's vintage tile in the basement (because that would be too easy to clean up)
f) your dog will poop a smell that no human has ever smelled which makes your husband run, screaming, far far away in the other direction, where he goes and gets a mask to even be in the house
or
g) yes, I am going to include it: all of the above

Guilty.

If you guessed "g", well, by golly, you're right!  Tell them what they've won, Johnny!  

Johnny: a newwww DOG!!

Feel free to come pick her up anytime.

Peace, love, and I've washed it 4 times and I can still smell it,
Ms. Daisy

Should you get a dog?

Perhaps you've been wondering, "Should I get a dog?"  Oh, those furry little creatures and their antics.  Maybe you have children and you feel that their life is missing a vital part because you have not provided them with a pet.

Perhaps you've watched one too many commercials for the Humane Society where you see those pathetic little faces and how they've been abused by idiots so you feel so sorry for them, you think you ought to just run right down to your local dog pound and pick up one (or a dozen) of those poor little sad mutts.

Now clearly, odes ought to be written to the generous souls who do such things, for in their sacrifice they embody all that is good and gentle in humanity (which, as we can clearly see in all forms of media, is the basest specks of minimal as the majority represents crudeness, selfishness and is bent on filling their gills with evil).

But, alas!  I warn you, you fair of soul - do not be hasty!

Today I shall present to you empirical and shocking evidence and reason why you should NOT get a dog.  Now, if you are weak in stomach, I advise you to look away as I expose such horrors.  This is not for the faint of heart!

You have been warned.

What I am about to show you is the accumulation of a mere TWELVE hours.  Twelve.  It was all it took to make such a disaster as this.  Go ahead - look.  If you can stand it!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is simply what was on the non-carpeted areas.  I must add that twelve hours prior to this photo of evidence, I was on my hands and knees scrubbing and washing the floors.  There was NOT ONE piece of dog hair to be found anywhere when I was done.  

I have a theory and I believe it has been proven true in my case time after time.  It is this: when an area has been cleaned of dog evidence (whether that is fur in the house or excrement in the yard), there is something deep and even primordial within my animal that spurrs her on to inversely proportional destruction, not only replacing what she perceives was "lost" in that area, but to push it beyond the limits of what was previously there, and declaring that area more loudly than ever that A Pet Lives Here.

What on earth must she be doing through the night to fill the nooks, crannies, cracks and the majority of the floors with this amount of fur?  Does she have a specially designed pet shaver that she employs for such desperate times as these?  How is it that after this, upon the dawn of a new day, she seems to have ever so much fur as before, nay!  To be even furrier!  And yet, the floor is strewn with evidence contrary.

Do you find when you clean up your yard and you tie up the bag, as you sigh a sigh of relief knowing that you can walk safely without doggie land mines, upon that very exhale, your vision darts to the corner of the yard in absolute horror as your dog assumes the position, tail out, hunched down, and unloads an ungodly amount of a pile that you thought was never before in the realms of possibility?  This, dear friends, is my weekly life.  It is the ins and outs of daily life here in Petlandia.

So examine yourself carefully, dear ones.  Search the depths of your soul.  Balance the truth of evidence against the Humane Society's devious heartstring-pulling ways.

At the very least, I must declare - you have been warned!

Peace, love and I'm off to vacuum,

Ms. Daisy

German Shepherd dogs

You know you have a German Shepherd dog when...

they ring the doorbell to let you know they want to come in...

and then bark crazily when they hear it ding.

Peace, love and if I told you once, I've told you a thousand times: do NOT get a dog,
Ms. Daisy

Diseased EPI dog + my carpet = frenetic mad scientist

Repeat after me:  I promise I will NEVER EVER GET A DOG.

Great.

Why the angst?  Let's begin with the stench that is permeating my bedroom at present. I'd say it smells something like a bath of cat urine combined with sour diseased feet.  Yumsters.  That, my friends, is the smell of a dog with EPI (a dog who has a disease wherein they don't have any pancreatic acids and you have to digest their food for them).

The dog isn't even IN THE ROOM.  She's put the stench into the carpet.

For the last four hours I have been on my hands and knees forcefully scrubbing and convulsing over the carpet trying to get it out.  I have tried many things.  Many, many things.

Do you know what my husband says?  He says HE CAN'T EVEN SMELL IT.

I couldn't fall asleep a few days ago because it was so bad.  Dude.  He's like a mosquito that got used to jungle DEET or something.

It is not humanly possibly NOT to smell it.  I HATE bad smells.  More than most people, even.  It is some kind of whimpery torture for me to go through.  

As you know, I can't just go and burn filthy candles or spray essential oils all over the world to try to cover it up.  (I tried.  Not the candle thing.  I'm tired of painting.)  That just makes essential oil flavored diseased feet cat urine smell fill the room.  And that, if you can believe it, is worse than the original putrid vomiticious odor.

I began by pouring vinegar all over the place.  That works at about 90%.  Basically, you trade in the scent of barftastic for vinegar.  Yes, vinegar is sour, but I would stick my nose over a vinegar bottle all day long rather than get a whiff of that dog odor.  So I tried to scrub it out with some vinegar.  The stench returned.

Then I tried various essential oils.  This was the point that I realized that even though essential oils are great, they do not smell great when combined with vinegar and dog stench.  In fact, it is pretty much guaranteed an instant gag reflex.  Lemon, rosemary, mint, even grapefruit filled the air.  For ten seconds.  Then the stench returned to tango with the essential oils.

Then I poured rubbing alcohol all over the carpet.  This did work well.  It pretty much just burned out my sense of smell for an hour or two.

I found a Crunchy Betty recipe for a carpet cleaner that I thought I would try for the heck of it since I was scrubbing away with so many things on the carpet anyway.  Her carpet cleaning recipe is this: 1/4 cup vinegar (hello again), 1/4 cup borax, 1/4 cup coarse salt.  Mix together, dump on carpet, scrub like a maniac.  Let dry, vacuum up, wash carpet with towels.

It actually works really well.  Except now I was even more disturbed because my black dog has left many dog oil marks everywhere she has laid and I decided to go all neurotic on it and scrub the bedroom frenetically.

In my cleaning tornado I decided it would be a great idea to get nearly boiling water and mix it with Trader Joe's lavender dish soap on top of the Crunchy Betty carpet cleaner idea.

I have no more clean towels in the house but I do have a neck cramp.  And a bit cleaner of a carpet.

But if I suck in really hard and sniff, I can still smell the lingering stench of diseased feet cat pee.

I'm still waiting for you to come pick her up.

I'll pay you.

Peace, love and I wonder if I should have just went with a hardwood floor in here...
Ms. Daisy

I CAN STILL SMELL IT!!!!!

What the offspring doesn't break, the dog will destroy

I just wrote a post this week about how children and animals make your house dirty (and thus, my solution: paint over everything), but I left out another vital part of what happens when you live with children and animals - what your children don't destroy will be obliterated by the dog.

THEY BREAK EVERYTHING.

My husband used to say that his Dad used to say, "You kids destroy everything!"  

Apparently I am getting his "what goes around comes around" karma.  Thanks, honey.

(I don't even believe in karma but I'll blame it on anything that will make me feel better right now.)

Last night, child 1 (you know, like Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss?) was all about watching a video and asked permission to do so.  We agreed that child 1 could watch for about 30 minutes.  What happens?  Child 1 sticks the DVD in the player wrong, the thing starts blinking error messages and I spend 45 minutes after the offsprings have gone to bed taking the DVD apart and rescuing the DVD.  Oh JOY OF ALL JOYS!  Do you know what I found in there?  ANOTHER DVD!  Sideways!  I feel like a freakin' leprechaun finding gold at the end of a rainbow.

This is why I keep a small book that I've titled The Broken Record in the kitchen.  In it, I jot down everytime something is broken, who broke it and when.  I should have started a few years ago, but it is a rather new invention so it only contains entries since November 2012.  I don't know exactly why I have this besides it makes me feel better to document such madness (case in point: this blog in general).  In it, I have some items like: mortar and pestle, miniblinds, scratches (and footprints) on minivan, lawn rake, stapler, van Gogh picture frame glass, fruit bowl, keyboard drawer on desk, mason jar, desk chair, letter tray, glass pyrex, lightsaber, whistle, glass plate, cars, window cranks, etc.

Perhaps you have no children.  Perhaps you have children and they are of the female sort.  If so, you probably think I am raising wild apes.  I can assure you that I am the most rule-following and rule-encouraging person and a 9/10 on the strict scale.  The fact is, they're something like wild beasts!  

Early this morning I came home from the pool and walked over to visit my garden upon arriving home.  I noticed that HALF of the back of my garden was newly and utterly destroyed.  The gloriously growing zucchini, cucumber and pumpkin plants were trampled to death, broken and flattened to the dirt.  

Look, dog prints.

Look, I'm duct taping knives onto poles and sticking them into the garden aimed at a 45 degree angle for anything that might decide to jump in.

No, I guess that was just the daydream I had after seeing my hard work obliterated.

Once more?  DO NOT GET A DOG.

And if you're all hating on me for saying such, I gladly offer my diseased dog to you.  I will give you a free cage, leash, dog food, dog pills, mortar and pestle (for crushing said pills) and whatever other accoutrements you desire for the care of the four-legged wrecking ball.  You can even have the special dog pooper scooper since her puddles can either be hosed into a deluge or scraped onto a flat surface for removal.  In the meantime, I will think of you and wish you'd hurry as I scoop the dung that the flies have so graciously and wisely decided would be a great starter home for their little maggot babies.

God help us all.

Peace, love and we're the only ones I know who RUN OUT of Gorilla glue before it dries up,
Ms. Daisy

When it gets dirty, paint!

Holy cow.  I just figured it out.  This is so disturbing.

Okay, so for all of you out there who have small little-ins offsprings and a/some possible four-legged creature(s) running around your abode, there is a chance that there has come a time in your life that you looked around your house and said, “Why is everything so DIRTY in here?!” 

That is because you were remembering the times of old, those good old times, when things stayed clean.  For five minutes or more!  Sorry sucka, those days are long gone.  That is because those little-ins and that creature (or more) are bound and determined upon penalty of death that they are going to do their darnedest to wreck everything you have in the shortest amount of time possible like they’re going for the Guinness Book in some kind of mad wild eyeball panic streak. 

Awww, little-ins and creatures are so darling.

Yes, they are.  The little-ins, I mean.  I’ve told you about the creatures before.  Them, not so much.  For crying out sideways, DO NOT GET A DOG.  Just in case you missed it the first fifty times.  If you were looking for a sign from heaven to confirm, there it was.

Ahem.

So I pride myself on being ultra-tidy and minimalistic (sorta – not 100% like manvsdebt.com, but on the spectrum reaching toward him).  I love things in their place.  I love 90 degree angles and when there are lines on the carpets and lines in the grass (and obviously lines along the cement from edging).  I throw stuff out like I’m in a race to do so. 

But for the last year or so, I’ve been cleaning my heart out and my head off and every time I look around, I say, “But something is wrong! It’s just not the same!  What the heck is it?”  Then I would lament the sadness of it all and go get a piece of Trader Joe’s 72% dark chocolate (organic, of course) and sigh whilst eating it.

Today I found out what the thing was.

This is some kind of horror to admit.  I am a professional organizer.  I go in peeps houses and tear it up.  I clean like Martha Stewart is a slacker.  But no.  This has escaped me – until now.

The tops of the walls.

They’re all disgusting!  How did they get so gross?!  They’re like this grey, dirt, hazy, yuck sauce.  I am guessing it may have been from the eight years straight of burning candles, but that is just a guess.  I think I burned them for about 16 hours a day.  Yes.  Don’t do that.

I HATE candles now – with a passion!  Those rotten, stupid, disgusting horrors!  If I could, I’d…well…I’d, I’d BURN THEM!  No.  No, I wouldn’t.  Because that would just make them happy and cause more of the problem.

So I got up and started scrubbing.  Wild scrubbing.  Magic Eraser scrubbing.  Bleach scrubbing.  Trader Joe Lavender dish soap scrubbing.  All of the above scrubbing.  TO NO AVAIL.

This, quite frankly, makes me die.  A teensy bit, in my heart and in every way.  What to do.

Especially because my house looks like some weird smeary tragedy.

Gotta solve it. 

Paint!

Lots of paint.  That glorious horror!  The time-consuming, messy, falling-apartness of it all that results in something lovely that you want to stare blankly at for minutes at a time.

You haven’t seen me on here in the last few days because I have been in the midst of such a painting tornado.  Ultra bright white paint that makes it seem like I have installed different lighting in the house.  It is amazing.

But you know how it is when you paint, right?  You start on the trim around the doorway and it connects to the top trim and then the trim on the other side of the door, then that connects to trim on the ground…which connects to trim around a closet door.   Well, it’s sick. You just can’t stop.  I started off in the hallway and it ended up as me tearing up the offspring’s room completely and painting around every window, the closet trim, the baseboards and then quite considering if I ought to go out and buy some more paint and change the color of the room altogether.  (I haven’t.  Yet.)

My house is new.  (Mostly.  I’m still painting.)  I am covered in paint. But there is something wonderful about the result of the chaos: for five minutes (maybe more if I get lucky), I will return to the look of clean.

Back to it.

Peace, love and pass me that roller,

Ms. Daisy

Randoms - Part III

Today is one of those days where I have a lot of randomness swirling around in my head - here comes the shrapnel.

1.  Doesn't life seem so much better when the sun is out?  Whether it is or it isn't actually doesn't weigh in as heavily when you've got sunshine.  It gets an automatic bump up like 10 points on the happy scale.  And I can truly appreciate it living in a city that spends 90% of their days a year being cloudy or partly cloudy.  It's a wonder of wonders.

2.  Have you ever discovered something that - once it was discovered - you thought that your former uneducated self may have truly been frolicking up and down on the idiot bus?  I'm sure you haven't.  But I have an example for you from my very life from this very day, just to show you what it might be like.  So today...well, I "discovered" how to make Cream of Wheat on my own.  Yep.  I coarsely ground wheat in my mill and cooked it like Cream of Wheat.  Now, yes, I must say - I've only had my mill for a few days, but what was I thinking before of what Cream of Wheat was?  It's WHEAT.  Ground up.  Not as soft as flour.  Mind = blown.  See what I mean?  Please get off the bus, now, Ms. Daisy.

3.  Why does crochet seem like such a winter sport?  You could benefit from it all year long, but no, it gets all of its cozy glory in the cold months.  Poor thing.  It's like hockey, minus the playoffs.  And other parts of the season that extend past winter...um...

4.  Have you noticed that all of your friends have babies in groups?  Maybe it's just me, but seriously, there was a period of time where I had no friends having babies and then 3 all within a month (or less) of each other.  These are not random acquaintances - I'm talking about real friends.  Must be that "things come in threes" thing.

5.  Remember my post about prunes?  Oh man.  I love and hate those things.  I seriously wanted to die when I ate more than 4 of them at a time.  Really.  Like every piece of my body was revolting, turning inside out and stabbing me.  My FEET were even hurting and I was thinking I remember labor being easier than what I was going through (maybe it was too distant to remember correctly, not sure).  Oh prunes, you are the dear and beloved enemy of my  life!

6.  Don't ever get a dog.  Were you thinking of it?  If so, you may have mine.  She is so smart, loyal and loving.  And diseased in the bowels.  And sheds her volume per diem.  And requires special $50 food and porcine pancreatic enzymes.  Life = hilarious.

Before anything else has a chance to blob out from my brain to the keyboard to your eyeballs and into your brain, I'm going to sign off.  

Peace, love and let them eat Cream of Wheat!
Ms. Daisy