I might not have had Bob Ross's painting abilities, but I did have his hairstyle...

Those of you who are of increasingly advanced age, as I am, may remember the artist Bob Ross from the back-in-the-day PBS show The Joy of Painting.  

Bob used to talk in an extremely mellow and calm voice, all about the "happy clouds" and "happy trees" and how you didn't make a mistake, just a "happy little accident" and in the span of one half hour TV show, he managed to produce a pretty darn decent painting, usually a landscape, and make it look easy to boot.


Well, back in the day when the Husband was just the Boyfriend and we were poor college student types, we decided that we too could paint like Bob Ross.  Well, "we" in this scenario was actually the Boyfriend, as I've never held the faintest illusion that I could actually paint (or draw, or sketch, or pastel, or sculpt or do anything artistic that involves me using my hands and brain to reproduce something that another human being can readily identify) and this is an opinion with which many unfortunate art teachers from the early 70s through the late 80s would wholeheartedly concur.  I am most pathetically Artistically Ungifted, y'all.  But, I was swept up in his enthusiasm and agreed that this would be a fun weekend activity, so we went to the art supply store and picked up some Bob Ross painting kits.


After doing an exhaustive internet search (read: fifteen seconds with my good friend Google and then five minutes of making Hubby stop the gargantuan computer project he's been working on all weekend to turn around and look at link after link as I hollered at him "Hey, do you think this is it?  This must be it, right?  Oh, no, wait, isn't this the one?  What about this one?"), I'm fairly certain that this was the kit we bought, or it was from the same series at least, although the canvas that came with ours was much smaller (again, poor college students - we didn't have the cash to spend on a deluxe canvas set) and of "landscape" instead of "portrait" orientation.  (Well, that's the way we painted them, anyhow.)  We went back to Hubby Boyfriend's apartment and set up our project.  We worked on our canvases intently and diligently for the better part of the afternoon, finally getting to step 10 (signing our paintings with pride!) and left them to dry.  I'd like to tell you that our painting experience was as mellow and fluffy as Bob and his hair, but it wasn't.  Not even the magic of Bob Ross could turn me into a decent artist.  What should have been a glorious, snowcapped Mystic Mountain, rising up above a lake and river into a happy-little-cloud-speckled sky looked more like a hunk of moldy cheese, smoldering on a shiny salad plate.  Oh well.

Shortly after our Wild Weekend of Art, the Boyfriend upgraded to the Fiancé and shortly after that, we began living together.  I began the practice of proudly displaying our masterpieces side by side in our first apartment and kept the tradition up for many residences over the years, until the paintings got packed away for a move and lost to the set of Boxes One Never Actually Unpacks, but Still Moves from House to House Where They Reside in a Forgotten Corner of the Basement.  Periodically, I'd think "Hmmm, I wonder what happened to those Bob Ross paintings we did?" and even attempt a search of the BONAU,bSMfHtHWTRinFCotB but no matter how many of those dang Mystery Boxes I would paw through, it was always in vain.


Until last month, that is, when I was helping Kiddo gather materials for school project and opened up the trunk in which I have stored copies of just about every photo we've ever taken of her in the past 7.75 years.  This trunk also contains several other odds and ends in the "memento" realm, like the lock of hair from Kiddo's first haircut, copies of her birth announcements (along with approximately 200 extra prints of the photo we sent out with her birth announcement - um, what the heck were we thinking?) and many miscellaneous photos of ours taken well before Kiddo arrived on the scene.  And there, in the trunk, I found them.  The Bob Ross paintings.  Both of them, tucked away in the bottom of the trunk (which, in hindsight, seems a perfectly logical repository for them, and one I should've therefore thought of instead of one of the basement boxes), in all their technicolor glory.

I haven't hung them up again, though I just might.  I think I'd want to frame them first, which is something we couldn't afford to do back when they were created and something I never got around to in subsequent years.  We'll see if they make it up onto the wall or if they languish on top of the scanner where they've been since last month when I unearthed them.  In the meantime, however, I proudly present the Internet Unveiling of the Smiths' Mystic Mountains:


Mr. Smith's (not too bad, really):

and mine:

I'd like to remind you that theoretically, these should have looked identical to each other as well as pretty darn close to Bob's original:

But hey, if I never did quite match Bob's painting talent, at least I did once rock his hairstyle:

 (image borrowed from the Bob Ross Wikipedia entry)

(me, circa 1987)

Last but not least, I'd like to dedicate this post to my dear Aunt Becky, because she hears Bob Ross's voice in her head (along with Billy Mays, but that's neither here nor there) and because I once promised her that if I ever found the paintings, I'd share them with her.  So, this one's for you, AB!

My haunted apartment

I moved into my first apartment back when I was in college.  It was the summer after my sophomore year, and a really good friend of mine and I decided we'd had enough of the dorms and found an apartment together near campus for the following year.  It was the first apartment for both of us, and I will admit I felt quite grown-up, signing a lease and paying rent and all.  (I was all of 19 at the time.)  We'd looked at several apartments, but with our budgetary constraints, most of the nice ones were well out of our reach.  We settled on a two bedroom, one bath on the outskirts of what was considered the "University" neighborhood - more grad students than undergrads were found living that far away.  The neighborhood was, how shall I put it?  Bohemian.  Artsy.  Sketchy.  The building was right off a street that was known for its shops, bars and theaters - all of the decidedly alternative variety.  In short, had my parents driven up from Jersey to check out our proposed abode before we signed the lease, I don't think I would've signed the lease.  I probably would've found myself living in a dorm for another year.

That's not to say that the apartment was a total dive, mind you.  At least, I've seen worse.  It was on the second floor of a three story building - an actual apartment building, not a converted house, as so many of the student rentals were in that town.  The apartment's best feature was its HUGE living room with large windows and an interesting (albeit dingy with age) black-and-white tiled floor.  We envisioned turning the apartment into a 20s Art Deco style showplace, though that didn't get any farther than buying some black and white sheets with which to cover the hideous couches and black and white plates and mugs for the kitchen.

Annnnnyhow, it was not a bad place, despite the .........colorful neighborhood, and we happily moved in and went about our lives.  Thanks to Google Maps and my ridiculously good longterm memory, I can show you a picture of the building:

Now, this was an older building (as evidenced by the picture above).  Having grown up in a very old farmhouse (as in: 1740s vintage), I was used to the quirks an old building can have.  You know, the occasional creak or squeak or dripping faucet... None of that sort of thing fazed me in the least.  After a few years of living with roommates, I was used to those sorts of quirks, as well - a light left on here, a door left ajar there, things taken out and not put back exactly where they had been before.  No big whoop.  So, a few weeks into the semester, my roommate and I attended a party at a home occupied by a bunch of grad students (friends of her boyfriend's) that was in the same neighborhood.  In the course of chatting with some of these people, it came up that we lived just up the road.  Someone asked us where, specifically, and when we told him, he said to us "Oh, the haunted building on the corner?"


Haunted building?  Did he just say haunted building?


Yep, that's what he said.  We tried to inquire further, but the noise level and his alcohol level made getting solid details mostly impossible.  He and the group of people we were standing with all nodded vigorously in agreement that our building was most definitely said to be haunted, that much was clear.  My roommate went off in search of her boyfriend at that point, and it wasn't until later when he was walking us home that I realized how upset she was over the news.  I shrugged it off for the most part, chalking it up to a local urban legend at best.


Except all of a sudden, those creaks and squeaks and things that went bump in the night seemed a bit more.....ominous.  The faucet that would start running in the bathroom or kitchen sinks wasn't as easily dismissed as "Oh, she must've left the water running."  Ditto for the lights that we could've sworn we turned off at night before retiring to our respective bedrooms and then find on the next day.  Neither of us were prone to sleepwalking, much less sleep-dishwashing or sleep-toothbrushing, so finding the tap running or a light on in the morning began becoming more and more disconcerting.


Then, it happened.  I was home at the apartment alone one evening, my roommate having gone over to her boyfriend's place for dinner.  Around 10pm, she called me to say that she was staying over there, so I could put the chain on the door, which I went and did as soon as I got off the phone.  I decided to go to bed shortly thereafter, checking the lock and chain on the door, making sure all lights and taps and everything were off, and closing my bedroom door behind me.


Now, I am a sound sleeper.  One might say I sleep like the dead, even.  But that night, something woke me up around 3 am.  I sat up in bed, trying to figure out what it had been.  (Our upstairs neighbors favored loud, heavy metal music and seemed to have footwear solely composed of cement blocks.)  As I came fully awake, I realized I could hear noise coming from the living room.  I got up, turned on my bedroom light, opened the door and found the stereo was on.  The stereo that I had not been listening to before going to bed - I'd had the TV on - was on and set to the radio (I'd been listening to a cassette earlier in the day, so the knob had not been set to "tuner" when I'd shut it off hours before.)


I chose not to think about how and why it was on and instead rushed across the room and shut it off, then ran back into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me, and got back in bed.  Eventually, I fell asleep again.  When I next woke up, it was a little after 7 in the morning.  I got up, opened my door and............. the radio was on again.  On and turned to a station that played jazz way down at the other end of the dial, far from any of the rock stations my roommate and I preferred.  Also, the chairs that had been pushed in under the dining room table against the opposite wall were pulled out, away from the table, and set together a few feet into the living room, facing the windows.  As though someone had wanted to sit and admire the view while listening to some jazz.


In the light of day, I didn't feel nearly as freaked out, so I bravely marched across the room, switched the radio back to our preferred station and then shut it off and moved the chairs back to where they belonged.  I checked once again - all the windows were shut and locked (and besides, we were on a second floor apartment with no fire escapes or other easy means of reaching them), and the door was locked with the chain still on.  At first I was convinced my roommate had come home, somehow gotten in to the apartment despite the chain and had been messing with me.  This wasn't at all her style, but still.  Just to be on the safe side, I called her up over at her boyfriend's apartment.  Nope, she hadn't been home - in fact, I woke them up by calling.  I explained to her what I'd discovered overnight and that morning, thoroughly freaking her out in the process.  She never spent another night in our apartment the rest of the lease without her boyfriend sleeping over, and more nights than not she wound up spending at his place or going home to her parents' house, as they lived nearby.  I, on the other hand, continued to live in the apartment with whatever (whomever?) else had been there before our lease.  I'd even occasionally chastise them aloud for leaving a light on or the tap running, since the utility bills were only being split two ways.  Other than trying to avoid the laundry facilities in the basement unless it was daylight (the basement was spooky in and of itself, haunted or otherwise), I had no major issues with our building's other tenants, human or ......?  Throughout the remainder of the lease, lights would be turned on - usually in the bathroom or kitchen, and taps would be turned on in the sinks and occasionally the tub.  Every now and again, a drawer or cabinet in the kitchen would be open.  Things didn't always turn up where we thought we'd left them.  A few times, small things went missing - loose change, pens, that sort of thing.  

Did we have ghosts sharing the apartment with us?  I couldn't say for sure.  I will say that whatever dwelled there (beyond the death metal Neanderthals upstairs) was fairly benign.  Nothing malicious or harmful ever transpired in the apartment, beyond the slightly higher utility bills.  I never did find out the story behind the building's supposed haunting.  I'm still curious, though...  So, what about you?  Do you believe in ghosts and hauntings?  Have you ever shared a home with a poltergeist?  Can you come up with a more rational explanation for the goings-on in our apartment that year?

And on that note, Happy Halloween to you and yours from me and mine!  I'll leave you with our jack o'lantern for this year, carved by Hubby and Kiddo (I do NOT do pumpkin guts) earlier this afternoon:

   

Why Tim Gunn will never, ever be my BFF

As I've mentioned in my previous few posts, I was visiting my family down in Jersey last week, and while I was there I went through several boxes of old photographs.  As I looked through this collection of moments in my life, one thing became abundantly clear: I am, and always have been, woefully unfashionable.

These days, I tend to stick to what I've come to think of as my SAHM "uniform" - sweaters and jeans or cords with wool socks and clogs or boots in the winter, long-sleeved t-shirts and jeans or pants with clogs or boots in the spring and fall, short-sleeved t-shirts and capris or shorts with Birks or flip-flops in the summer.  I wear appropriate clothing to church (skirts, dresses, sometimes even heels) and if the occasion demands it (social functions for Hubby's work, etc).  I know I'm not trendy or hip, and I don't particularly care, since I'm not really trying to be "in" these days.  I dress in what is comfortable and practical for my lifestyle, and it works for me.

Earlier in my life, however, I did care more about fashion.  I tried very hard to be hip and trendy, to look hot and therefore be cool.  Tried, and failed, it seems, for decades upon decades.  Looking through the evidence of my lifetime of fashion don'ts, my overwhelming unpopularity among the cooler crowd is suddenly making sense.

Shall we have a photo retrospective to illustrate my point?

 

 

This is my third grade class picture.  We had just moved to our new home in NJ and I started third grade a few weeks into the start of the year.  I was a year younger than my classmates, from a small, upstate NY town that was light years behind the much "faster" and more mature culture of the tri-state area, and I was smart.  Really smart, and bookish and talkative and without meaning to be, an instant teacher's favorite.  I also was wearing glasses (though not all the time yet, just for distance things like reading the blackboard), and I lived on a working sheep farm in the middle of an increasingly developed, suburban community.  Only one other kid in my grade lived on a farm, and he wasn't exactly the epitome of coolness either.  My parents tended to fall on the conservative end of the spectrum, and furthermore didn't believe in the "importance" of having all the latest and greatest things.  While I did have some teeth in my mouth again (the previous year, I'd had twelve pulled during an overnight stay in the hospital, including all my top and bottom front teeth.  The hanging-down threads of the stitches were the only things protruding from my gums for a couple months there that year), the teeth I had were wonky and screaming out for orthodontic intervention, which they soon received in the form of every appliance known to modern dentistry as well as six years of braces.  When you add all the above factors up and then look at my fashion choices, it is no wonder that I spent the next three years in abject, mostly friendless misery, followed by a junior high and senior high experience that definitely did not find me running with the "in" crowd or sitting at the "cool kids" table in the cafeteria.

You think I kid?  Check out the following year:
 

This was my most favorite dress, ever as a child.  I thought of it as my Laura Ingalls dress.  I adored it and would wear it to school whenever my mother would let me.  With knee socks and Mary Janes.  This is the late 70s now, mind you, when tight designer jeans and long, feathered hair were in vogue.  Not whatever I had going on on top of my head and the Little House on the Prairie look.  This was the last year I only was a part-time Four Eyes, and I'm fairly certain I was holding my retainers in my other hand.

Speaking of the farm, here I am in a casual moment, sometime around 1980 or '81.  While I'd like to give myself points for having a shirt with my name on it (if memory serves, my mom ironed the fuzzy letters on herself), I'm fairly certain the rainbow sneakers kill any chance of coolness the outfit might've had.  Also, those were either Lee or Wranglers jeans, not Jordache or Sergio Valente.

Let's skip ahead into the formative teenage years now, shall we?

Here I am in high school.  Freshman year, I think.  This was taken at Christmas (at my aunt and uncle's house - my parents never had that color shag carpeting on the farm), and my outfit of choice?  A red, polyester blouse with a red and black bowtie, black sweater vest with a white argyle-esque print, a white skirt (with pockets! that I used!) and oddly orange-toned pantyhose.  (I believe those were my favored "suntan" color hose by No Nonsense, which was a sad case of me believing the marketing. I really should've stuck with the "nude" color.)  Tell me, what 13 year old dresses like this voluntarily?  I remember, once again, thinking I looked good.

It really was downhill throughout the 80s.

This is me on vacation with my family at Disney World, spring break of my sophomore year.  I don't know where to begin here.  The dark indigo Lee jeans poorly pegged at the ankle, the purple t-shirt under the pastel, striped, short-sleeved jacket, the hair, the earrings, the sunglasses, oh dear Lord, the sunglasses.

Seriously.  WTH?!?!

The only good thing that can be said for this period was that I hadn't yet begun the Big Perm phase of my later teenage years (which was the sequel to my Big Perm tween years).  That came the following year...........

This was a publicity shot for one of the shows I was in during high school.  (What?  Of course I was a theater geek, to go with the music geek and literary magazine geek and co-president of the Spanish Club......)  My hair was too big to fit into the frame, y'all.  (Also, that is a zit, not a Cindy Crawford wanna-be "beauty mark" there by my mouth, beautiful.)  I remember being disappointed that I didn't have some of my larger earrings in that day, as we were all just grabbed when possible by the teacher who made up the cast board with the photos.  What you're mercifully missing in this picture due to its lack of color is my eye makeup and lipstick, which were both always loud (remember that dayglo blue mascara?  Owned it, wore it, LOVED it.  Also dayglo green.  With even louder, neon-er eye shadow and liner to match), and also my hair, which by that point I'd lightened to a strange sort of orangey-red by using chamomile soap.  (Color photos of that color and further enlightenment as to my lifetime of being a fashion don't can be found here.)  At least I was out of braces by then, so my teeth were no longer a wonky nightmare.  The frosted, ice-pink lipstick I preferred in high school set them off so well...

Here's another one from high school.  This appears to have been taken at my sister's Confirmation, which means she was in 8th grade and I was therefore a junior in high school.  (Side note: the older gentleman to the right of the frame is my late grandfather, who lived with us following my grandmother's death until his own death a few years later.  *sniff*)  Please ignore the face I'm making as I'm about to inhale a piece of post-church service refreshments, and just let me point out the white pants with black pinstripes.  I loved those pants.  Loved them.  Here's the thing: I wore those year-round because hey, they're white but they had black in them, too!  Seriously - look:

See me there?  That was taken in January.  Yep, the same white, light cotton pants with a black turtleneck, white stockings and black shoes and I was good to go.  At least when I was wearing them in church that day the previous summer, they were seasonally appropriate, even if the black belt didn't tie the outfit together quite as much as I thought, nor did it go with the white purse or heels.  I had a particular fondness for that sweater, as it was one of only two Benetton clothing items I owned.  I cringe to admit that I wore that sweater well into the 90s, too.  Oh, if you look closely at the first photo, you'll see some of my favored collection of silver rings.  I wore rings on every finger, including my thumbs.  If you look really closely, you'll see the "spoon handle" ring on my one finger - it was made of two welded-together spoon handles and it was huge.  It would pinch my hand when I played piano and leave me with some nasty blood blisters, as would a few of my (many) silver bracelets.  (No, I would not take them off just to spare myself the wounds.  You have to be willing to suffer for fashion, right?)

I could go on - sadly, there are hundreds more photo examples of why Tim Gunn will never, ever be my BFF - but I'll leave you with one, last picture to prove that I've always been fashionably hopeless:

'Nuff said.

You want fries with that?

Earlier this week, Kiddo and I went with some friends to the county fair.  While perusing the various dining options, we saw many traditional fair foodstuffs, like funnel cake, fried dough, snow cones, etc.  I mean, one doesn't go to a county fair for fine cuisine, after all.  Then, we came upon this booth:

Holy moly.  Now, I've eaten deep fried Oreos before and they're actually quite delicious.  However, I just couldn't help but feel like this particular food emporium has gone a wee bit over the top with its listing of deep fried fare.  Some things just shouldn't be deep fried, dontcha think?  Like, say, pizza.  That is just wrong!  (And this is coming from someone who is currently in the throes of major PMS and who would gladly dive head first into a giant bag of Fritos, followed by a supersized order of fries from Mickey D's and finish off by finishing off a bag of Double Stuff Oreos.  It isn't that I'm against junk food or grease or oil or deep frying, is what I'm saying, it's just that sometimes one can go too far.)  The stand didn't seem to be lacking for customers, however, so maybe I'm in the minority here, thinking that not everything tastes better when it's been deep fried.

(Also, I'm trying reallllllly hard not to comment on the grammatical error right there at the top of the stand's sign.  Reallllllllly hard.)

You know how it can be *too* quiet?

You know how sometimes, when you have children in your home, it can get too quiet? So quiet that your Spidey Sense starts tingling and tells you to immediately go seek out why there is such an absence of noise?


Sometimes, what you find is utter chaos and destruction.


Sometimes, what you find is an impromptu nap...



It seems that the combination of Kiddo's extremely active day at camp (this is "sports" week and baseball and soccer were played with much enthusiasm as well as a few spills, if the grass stains on the front and seat of her pants offer any evidence) and a twenty minute, read quietly to yourself in your super-comfy beanbag chair activity once we arrived home were just too much for Kiddo. By the time my Spidey Sense tingled and I went to investigate, there was already a pool of drool larger than the size of her hand accumulated beneath her cheek. Hopefully she was having highly literate dreams...

Feet, Fi, Fo, Fum

So, my feet? They're not that beautiful.



I hate my feet, actually. They're *not* feminine or delicate, they're noticeably different sizes, and my heels especially bear the collected consequences of 37.5 years of running around barefoot or in sandals as often as possible (including outdoors - even growing up on the farm with its gravel driveway and hard-packed-earth barnyards), and my toes? My wonky toes with the cracked toenails, the warped pinkie toes and the committed-to-shaving-for-life-thanks-to-a-foolhardy-spontaneous-act-back-in-the-late-80s big toes? They're just uuuuuugly. Fugly. Gross.



You think I kid? Fine, I'll prove it to you:




Oooh, yeah, I forgot about my "if it's almost summer, Heather's got the Birkenstock tan lines" across-the-top stripes. You should see them by the end of August...





You're sorry you ever doubted me now, aren't you? I may be prone to exaggeration, but not when it comes to my feet. I told you so. Don't worry, I'll spare you a shot of my other heel, not just out of pity, but because I almost fell over and gave myself a concussion attempting to photograph the bottom of this foot.


So, anyhow, I hate my feet. I actually hate all feet, with the exception of teeny-tiny baby feet and "still small enough to be cute" kid feet. Kiddo's feet used to be a thing of beauty. I loved those tiny feet, with their tinier toes. I called them "toe niblets" a la corn niblets and I'd eat them every chance I had. Now, at the age of six, her toe niblets are no longer so cute. They're crossing the border into FEET territory, as in get 'em away from me NOW please!, utilitarian-only feet.


Yeah, I have the opposite of a foot fetish. I have a foot phobia.


This is why I'm fairly certain that I have lost my last remaining shred of sanity. Why so certain, you ask?


Because I'm pondering the possibility of getting a pedicure tomorrow. Me. The one who hates her feet (and as I've demonstrated above, with darn good reason. Nasty, nasty appendages stomping about on tack strips and gravel, carrying me hither and yon...). The one who never lets ANYONE touch her feet, with the exception of my favorite massage therapist (who also happens to be a good friend) and even then, I don't let her touch my feet much or every time I go for a massage. Hubby doesn't touch my feet (nor does he want to - he's not exactly running after me, begging to rub my misshapen, gnarly, hirsute ham hocks) and Kiddo only does when she is feeling particularly death-wishy.


Why then would I even think of a pedicure?


I don't rightly know, except.... Hubby had a golf tournament today. (Wait, I know, that didn't make a lick of sense. Also, why is that even a phrase - a lick? Is sense a lollipop? I mean, I don't have much of it, so I guess that's why I don't know this...)


See, Hubby had a golf tournament today, and after that tournament was over, there was a dinner. A dinner with a raffle, for which Hubby bought 6 tickets. The raffle prizes, to hear Hubby tell it, were awwwwwwesome. Flat screen TVs. Wiis. Blueray players. 8 gig iPod Touches. Super-fancy golf clubs. Last year, Hubby played in the same tournament and entered the raffle and didn't win ANYTHING. Hubby really, really, reaaaaaally wanted to win a flat screen TV this year. He was extra-hopeful because he didn't win anything last year, as though Lady Luck would be extra kind to him with that whole "random drawing winners out of a hat" thing this year.


Hubby didn't win the TV. Or the golf clubs. Or anything else remotely cool-n-manly.


Hubby won a $100 spa gift card.


To a fancy-shmancy, ritzy, frou-frou spa.


Lady Luck must like girls. Girls with super-short Mom hairdos and rhinocerousean feet.


The gift card came with a list of services and their prices. Let me tell you, $100 doesn't go too far at this spa. I could get a "partial highlight" but not with a cut, wash or blow dry. Heck, they charge an "additional $15" to spritz some leave-in conditioner into your hair before you leave. A wash and blow dry with no cutting or anything else is $30. So, forget the hair salon - and besides, I just got the bird's nest tamed, so it's barely long enough to do now anyhow.


Facials were the next thing on the list for me to consider. Hmmmm, there are a couple that are under $100 (and many more that are well over $100, by the by) but I don't know whether I want someone looking at in depth and then touching my Acne-Like-I'm-a-Teenager/Wrinkles-and-Age-Spots-Like-I'm-a-Crone combination skin for any length of time. (Guess I have a thing about my face just like I do about feet...)


Then I considered the massages. There are a couple that are less than $100, but I don't know that I'd want to go all Full Monty at Le Chic-n-Ritzy Spa in front of strangers. (I did go Full Monty at the hotel spa in Vegas one time, but that was a sort of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" thing, whereas this spa is less than 5 miles from my house and I might see these people again and that would freak me out.) Besides, I have a massage therapist that I adore (and if you're local, you should go check her out - Joan at A Healing Sanctuary and tell her Heather sent you!) and I have a gift certificate Hubby gave me for Christmas that I still haven't used there yet.


I thought about the Seaweed Wrap, the Mud Wrap and the Salt or Sugar Scrubs (with Vichy - what the hey is that anyhow??) for about half a second combined. I know from watching TV and movies that those sorts of Wraps aren't delicious things to eat, but rather things that involve getting naked and then being scrubbed and swaddled in various substances for apparently 50 minutes. Again, can you imagine running into the Wrap Technician the following week at the grocery store? No thank you!


So, where does that leave me on this spa list?


Manicures and pedicures.


Now, manicures are decidedly out. I've had two manicures in my life: the first for my wedding and the second for my big appearance on Jeopardy. For both those occasions (and for the junior and senior proms), I grew my nails out and they looked all nice and pretty - for about 48 hours after the event in question. Yes, I am a lifelong, chronic nail biter. It's less likely to kill me than smoking cigarettes, so please don't chastise. I know it is a terrible habit. I know I need to stop - and I have, many, many times before. Sometimes for whole weeks. But that is neither here nor there.


What's left if the manis are out? Pedicures.................... The "Signature Spa Pedicure" is 80 minutes long. It would probably take them 80 minutes to recover from their initial shock upon viewing my 37.5 year old, decrepit hooves and gown up accordingly for the necessary HazMat levels. While I do hate my feet and only give them the most perfunctory of sporadic attention (beautification-wise, I typically paint my toenails a few times over the course of the summer, never removing the polish at summer's end, either. I use the gradual chipping/growing out of the nails under the polish as a timekeeper to know how long it has been since summer ended...), I wouldn't mind having nicer looking feet. Almost pretty feet, even. At least, feet that looked human instead of rhinocerousean.


So, there you have it. Way more info than you ever, ever wanted about Heather's Hooves. I know that there are those of you out there who love pedicures. Should I be considering this, boldly going where no Heather's Foot has ever gone before? Will they be utterly grossed out at the sight of my ham hocks clomping in through the spa doors, all gnarly in my Birks? Will the sight of my heels make them cry and/or recoil in horror? Will they snicker aloud at my big toes' 5 o'clock shadow?


So I wonder, do I dare and, do I dare?


And if I do dare, what is standard pedi-etiquette? Do I make small talk with the pedicurist? Do I bring a book? How does it all work, exactly?


Help!


If I do go and have a pedicure (and weirdly enough, the more I write about how much I hate my feet, the less this seems like an obviously lousy idea and the more I think I might just want to do it! See, told ya my marbles and sanity are gone!), I will post "after" pictures for you to see. If I don't go, though, you can rest assured that barring a George Clooney or Hugh Jackman autograph adorning one of my feet, you will never, ever see a photograph of them like the ones above ever again. Promise.


(PS - Please don't think I'm not super-excited about and grateful for this spa gift card. I totally, totally am. I'm beyond thrilled. It's just so unexpected and not my typical thing that I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the fanciness of the spa services menu. I swear to you I love this gift card, am thrilled that Hubby won it - not that I would've been sad had he won a WiiFit or flat screen TV - and touched and appreciative that he gave it to me. I mean, they *do* have "Gentlemen's Manicure" and "Gentlemen's Pedicure" and "Gentlemen's Cut" and "Gentlemen's Facial" options there, as well...)

Paging the Knights who say "Ni!"

So, we're doing some yard work today. Lots of yard work. Yard work that has been utterly neglected since we've moved in, actually. Yes, I've gone out and mowed the jungle a few times (and now dream of a riding mower the way I once dreamed of George Clooney...) but there were other tasks that we just hadn't gotten to until today. Namely, weed whacking and hedge trimming.

It is the hedge trimming that is killing us. Well, technically, it is killing Hubby, not me. I'm just planting my forlorn little tomato seedlings in the barrel planter that appears to have housed annuals and a thriving ant colony in years past and mowing again, in between wrangling Kiddo with her various levels of "assistance" in the yard work tasks. Hubby is trimming the hedgerows and shrubs with our brand-spankin'-new, gas powered hedge trimmer. It is sucking the life force right out of him, mostly because we have Way the Heck Too Many Dang Evergreen Shrubs and also because no one had tended to them in a Very Long Time.

I'm investigating various options now, as Hubby heads back outside to tackle more shrub pruning. (I dare not point out how lumpy and lopsided the "after" shrubs are, for fear of him either quitting altogether or coming after me with the brand-spankin-new, gas powered hedge trimmer.) Ideally, someone would want to come and dig out the shrubs for free and recycle them to some yard elsewhere. Or, a professional landscaping company would want to charge a ridiculously small amount to rid us of the evergreen nightmare. I'm pondering putting up a post on Freecycle and Craigslist saying "Evergreen shrubs and pachysandra - you dig and they're yours!" I've seen it done for pachysandra before, but not shrubs. Hmmmm.

My last option is finding a bunch of Knights who say "Ni!" as I have a wonderful offering in my yard for them...........................

In which I utterly blow any last remnants of my ladylike reputation clear to Heck

I've been debating whether or not I should relate the following anecdote. I mean, I do have a reputation to uphold, that of a dainty, delicate, utterly ladylike and genteel chick, of course...

At first, I was going to keep this to myself. Then, my dear friend Givinya de Elba posted something on her blog which spurred me into replying, via comment, about what had transpired despite my decision to keep this one in the vault and uphold my rep and all.

Furthermore, I was not, not, not going to share this with Hubby. I was firm on that one. I mean, it is true that over the past 16 and a half years we've been together, the bloom has somewhat come off the rose. The air of mystery surrounding All Things Feminine has long since whooshed out the window opened in the House Where Chicks Outnumber Dude. But, despite my resolve to not tell him, of course I did. Last night. Well, mostly - I was having a hard time getting to the crux of the matter given that I was giggling like a fool with tears streaming down my face. But he got the gist of my tale and then provided me with the perfect ending line, so now I am feeling compelled to blog it after all.

Here goes.... and if, by some slim chance, you're still subscribing to my Cheerful Delusion that I am a Dainty-n-Delicate Gal, you might want to stop reading now and go about your business.

So, I'm nearsighted. Really, really, reaaaaaally nearsighted. This is an accurate representation of Heather Without Her Corrective Lenses:



Seriously, I'm Squinty McWhatisthat without my specs. As one who has required glasses for more than one score and ten years (NB to Creative Junkie - I double checked and a score is twenty years. Apparently the brain cells aren't all pudding!) I have grown used to having to guesstimate what it is in front of my face at certain crucial times over the course of my day. The clock with extra-large, illuminated numbers that is over on Hubby's side of the bed (as he is the one who requires Control of the Alarm)? Perfectly used to squinting as hard as I can to determine if the number before the colon is one or two digits, and completely comfortable with the fact that unless it is 11:11, I'm not going to be able to tell what any of the numbers are beyond a glowing, green fuzz.

The tasks associated with showering are another set of things with which I am generally comfortable doing without being able to see them. (Goodness knows, the amorphous, jiggly, white mass that exists below my eyeballs is better left viewed in Extremely Soft Focus, anyhow.) Scrubbing, rinsing and that trickiest of all shower-related jobs: shaving, all are second nature to Magoo Me. Now, in order to shave my lower legs (and my big toes, if I am telling the complete truth, but what woman is going to admit to shaving her big toes? Let's just say it was a horrible mistake I first made back in my foolhardy teenage years that now requires regular maintenance, lest Sasquatch think I've robbed him of some digits in a weird, inter-species transplant situation) I have long since perfected a maneuver in which I prop my leg up against the side of the shower wall, kind of like this:



only slightly less dressed and graceful and also always solo. Oh, and I don't shave my armpits and legs simultaneously, so without the arm extension, too. Yes, for a big girl, I'm surprisingly flexible, and am able to effect the above position for better squinting proximity to shave.

Now, I must digress for a moment. It's actually relevant to the story, as you will see. I love prunes. Oh, I'm sorry, "dried plums" - thanks, Marketing Gurus! I love dried plums. Every once in a while, I'll be overcome while grocery shopping and buy a container of dried plums. (It does sound classier, I'll grant you that.) A few weeks ago, I was overcome in such a manner and thus, a large container of dried plums has recently been residing in our fridge. Dried plums that no one else in my family ever, ever eats, besides me. We've been frantically trying to eat down all the contents of our pantry, fridge, freezer and chest freezer with some decent amount of success, but it's taken effort. (We're down to about 1/3 of a case of frozen pizza dough balls, a Sam's Club sized box of Italian ices, and several bags of frozen veggies. Oh, and a large container of old-fashioned oatmeal. And Cheez-its, for Kiddo's lunches.) As I said, no one else in my family eats prunes dried plums, so it's been me giving a dedicated yet solo effort to finish off the container before Thursday, when we move. As I *big, red, puffy heart* them, this hasn't been a hardship. (And I should further note for the record that while I adore Jamie Lee Curtis - A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies were both performances of comedic perfection - I do not have a need for her in her new guise as the Activia Lady. Regularity has never been an issue for me, is what I'm saying.) I've been popping them down by the handful (as in four or five at a time) a few times a day, like when I'm making Kiddo's lunch for school or emptying the dishwasher or cooking dinner or walking by the fridge. They're so, so delicious. Mmmmm, prunetastic.

So, back to my original story. The other morning, I was in the shower and up to the deforestation portion of events. I was taking care of business in my usual Big Girl Ballet pose, and when I was through, I turned around to put the razor back up on the top shelf of the shower caddy that dangles from the showerhead. It was at this point that I noticed something on the floor of the tub.

That something, to be specific, was two somethings. Two small, dark brown, blobular somethings there behind me on the tub floor. Now, I suppose I must confess that while regularity isn't a problem for me in any event, my present Extra-Prunetastic diet has led to the occasional gaseous emission. And, while I was Leg Up on the Wall and shaving, I had a few such emissions. Whatever, I was home alone (well, besides the cat and frankly there is nothing I could bodily emit that could touch her post-bologna-consumption farts.) (NB to Crazy Sister - I amend my comment on your post earlier today. My cat's post-bologna-consumption gas might be the Worst Smell, Ever.) So, I froze at the sight of these two, small, dark brown, blobular somethings fuzzily peering up at me through the steam and myopia.

I will confess that I pondered for a moment or two if any of my recent gaseous emissions might've been a bit more... strenuous than I'd thought at the time. I mean, I was distracted by my Shaving By Braille method and the whole Trying Not to Slice My Legs or Feet Open business. But could I have been that distracted? Paraphrasing what Givinya said in her related blog post, getting up close and personal to such a potential biohazard in order to see it clearly is not something one wants to do. I bent over and squinted for all I was worth, but didn't dare actually get down onto the floor of the tub and poke my nose into it to see for sure. I hopped out of the shower and grabbed for my glasses and then turned back around to face the music.

This is what I found:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

*


That's Don Diego and Brownie, aka two of Kiddo's Teeny Tiny Guys, Dog Pack Division. (She has a multitude of TTGs, from dogs and cats to farm and zoo animals to two Teeny Tiny T. Rexes. Hubby and I have stepped on every single one of them over the years, too.) She's taken to bringing the TTG Dog Pack into the tub with her, as the dinosaurs in there were apparently getting dull. (They are getting rather icky from dwelling permanently on the ledge of the tub and may stay behind when we move...) I guess I didn't hear the clatter of Don Diego and Brownie as they slipped from their ledgeside perch to the floor of the tub, singing heartily as I was as per usual while going about my Showery Business.

Whew.

So, in conclusion, I told Hubby about this last night. He rolled his eyes at me, rolled over and began drifting off to sleep (a sleep that was full of dreams of loading U-Hauls and hoping that everything would fit, apparently). A few moments later, he rolled back over towards me, opened one eye and said "You know, the moral of that story is that you should never, ever eat anything without your glasses on."

He's probably right, too.





* Don Diego and Brownie's actual size is less than one inch, each. They come from that vending machine in the row of nasty gumballs and You're Never Going to Be Allowed to Get That candy in the front of the supermarket. So, they are in fact quite small.

When urban legends are true

As any of you who have read my blog in the past week are aware, Kiddo has RSV. With the RSV has come thick-n-plentiful congestion and a frequent cough. I'd posted about this on my Facebook status the day before yesterday (because if one is going to whinge on about something, one might as well whinge on in any available forum, eh? I Twittered about it too...). Within an hour, I had no less than three of my friends reply to my FB status update to suggest that I rub Vicks on the soles of Kiddo's feet at bedtime.

Now, I'd heard of this practice before and dismissed it pretty much out of hand. I mean, when I was a kid, sure, Mom would slather my throat and chest with Vicks (then wrap a dishtowel around my neck, safety-pinned at the back, under my jammies) whenever I had a bad chest cold/cough. But that makes some amount of sense, what with the vapors having good proximity to the breathing and all. How on earth could having Vicks on the bottom of one's feet be beneficial, if one sleeps like a normal human (or even like Kiddo, with her various contortions and shiftings about in her sleep) and not pretzeled up like some master yoga practitioner?? Plus, the instructions include covering the Vicks-slathered feet with socks (for bed linens-protection purposes) which adds a further layer of vapor-blocking to the enterprise.

But still, THREE people. Three mothers who I find to be not only quite sane, but utterly trustworthy, no less. All three of them were telling me of their first-hand experience doing this and swearing to me that this Vicks-on-feet thing worked. I told Hubby about it, and he scoffed. I told him I thought I might try it, and he rolled his eyes and scoffed further, then remarked that it would "ruin the bedding" before considering the matter closed. I googled it and proceeded to read the Snopes article (oh Snopes, how I adore thee and thy debunking ways) which didn't give a solid confirmation or denial. I clicked back to my google search results and proceeded to read blog after blog after message board after message board post about how mom after mom tried this with much success. (Of course no one hopped onto the interwebz to announce they'd tried this method and found it to be full of hooey....) It sure seemed like a lot of anecdotal evidence... I considered the idea some more.

When I announced my intention to Vicksify her feet at Kiddo's bedtime, Hubby threw his hands up and shook his head, as Hubby is wont to do when I'm on to one of my "crazy schemes", but I persisted. I slathered the bottoms of Kiddo's feet with Vicks (well, actually, with Generic Mentholated Rub Goo) and double-socked them, just to be sure that the linens and vast horde of stuffed animals that share Kiddo's bed wouldn't be too camphortastic come morning. We also ran the cool mist humidifier (set to "tropical rainforest") with the Vicks scented pad thingy in the holder for additional mentholated effect. Hubby was rather skeptical, and to be honest, so was I, but I figured it wasn't going to hurt anything, except maybe a stuffed animal or twelve who might need a bath come morning.

Kiddo fell asleep. Time ticked by. Nary a cough sounded from her room. I was up until almost midnight (thanks to an afternoon nap that threw my schedule totally off) and still, not a cough. Kiddo is an impressive cougher, too - it rings out through the house, reverberating off the walls in such a manner as to make our house seem like one of those sanitarium tuberculosis wards of old. All I heard was silence. I checked on her before turning in at twelve. Sleeping soundly and breathing pretty well (she was snoring, as she does whenever she's congested). Hmmmm.

This morning, Kiddo woke us up shortly after seven. Not by coughing up a lung, mind you, but by scampering into our room, relatively bright eyed and bushy tailed. Well, bushy haired at any rate - the kid does an awesome "bed head" look, even with her hair secured in a pony tail or braids before sleep. No coughing. None. Her nasal congestion also was markedly improved - I did the "squirt squirt" routine (nasal saline spray and much nose blowing) with her this morning and there was hardly anything produced compared to the floods of ick that scoffed at the Puffs Plus and exploded over my hand of yesterday.

Now, it is entirely possible that this is all coincidental, that Kiddo would've been this much improved without any wacky old wives'-urban legend remedy. Hubby thinks it was just the added presence of vapors in the room and posited that had I done as my mother did and rubbed it onto Kiddo's chest/throat instead, it would've worked as well if not better than the feet. Hmmmm. All I know is that 24 hours ago I was thinking there was no way Kiddo was going to be healthy enough to go back to school tomorrow, and now today? I totally think she could. She has no fever, hardly any congestion, and has only coughed once since she woke up. We're staying home again today and having one more day of "taking it easy" just to be safe, but all signs point to YES on the return to school, and you'd better believe I'm rejoicing over that.

Either way, you can be darn sure I'm going to Vicks her feet again tonight!

Cosmic Reset Button

I found it!



Now, I'm just going to push the button, and take care of all the problems facing the world. Everything from paycuts to layoffs to the mortgage and banking crises and the craptastic economy, to global warming and those melting polar ice caps, to civil unrest and genocide and famine and disease. Let's just all start fresh for the New Year, whaddya say? I'm calling do-over, right now. Everyone will live in peace, harmony and equality, everyone will have enough, everyone will have a home and family, no worries, no fears, no stress. Here we go...

PUSH

PUSH

PUSH

Dang it, I think it's stuck. Anyone got some WD40?

Something silly for a Saturday

Hubby was surfing the interwebz last night and came up with a bunch of random things that were totally cracking us up. Some were sites like Fail Blog and some, like the one I've posted here, were on Youtube. As a public service, I've saved you hours of time you could otherwise have wasted clicking and clicking and clicking through Youtube searching for hidden gems like this video by sharing this clip with you here and now. You're welcome.

Which is more evil...?

For your spouse to cook up a batch of spicy jambalaya (a smell you aren't particularly fond of at any time), complete with Cajun sausage so the smell wafts through the house and up to the bathroom floor upon which you are curled in a ball, moaning between bouts of norovirus-induced exploding, or for him to come upstairs a while later, under the pretense of "checking on you" and instead cheerfully announce that you, his miserable, wretched, sick wife, are "the LOUDEST barfer in the world" as though *that* is supposed to bring comfort to you in your time of need?

Yeah, let's just keep the pithy comments to ourselves and only bring me ginger ale and saltines, mmmkay? Or actually, hold the saltines, 'cause they aren't my friends yet either.

Oh, and other "fun" things I'd prefer to avoid include having company in the bathroom, especially of the Five Year Old Mini-Howard Cosell, Play-by-Play variety, during times like this. Just sayin'.

I wonder if this norovirus will help undo what all that Halloween candy did, at least..... that can be my silver lining!