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This week has been so busy and hectic that blogging time has been in short supply. Time in general has been in short supply as a matter of fact. Too many things have been going on and I am exhausted from it all and stretched far too thin. So during the intermission please enjoy pictures from Jas’s 7th birthday party today.


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What do you give the kid who has everything (except responsible parents)? A trampoline of course. Actually, it’s a “keeping up with the Jones’” kind of present. Maddie (Jas’s friend that lives on the same street) got one for her birthday 3 weeks ago. Suddenly trampoline sales have spiked as neighborhood parents are getting trampolines for their own rugrats.


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In fact, here is a picture of Jas with Maddie, the girl who started the neighborhood trampoline craze.


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Where oh where could my little Jas be, oh where oh where could she be? Hiding behind presents apparently.


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Blow out the candles quickly because the ice cream is melting and the bugs are buzzing.

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In all of the excitement, exhaustion and rush of coming home from vacation I neglected to put up the rest of my vacation pictures that I had meant to. I would tell you more of what we did on our vacation too, but I have lost my faithful handy dandy notebook that I had everything written in. Which brings to mind the fact that I didn’t tell ya’ll about how the vacation was almost cancelled a couple of hours before we were to leave for North Carolina.

We were set to leave for vacation on Friday June 16th. The hubster had to work that morning so my job was to take the dog to the boarder, gas up the SUV, pick up Jas and load up everyone’s suitcases and such in the back. On Thursday afternoon when Jas and I went to our favorite snow come place, the 1 year old Pathfinder started making a horrible noise. It sounded like a loose belt, or to a more trained ear like faulty bearings in some important place. I thought it was just a fluke and the noise would stop the next time I started the car. It did not. In fact, on Friday morning the noise was so loud that you couldn’t really drive the car. And did I mention our pathfinder is only ONE year old? One, people, just ONE year old. ONE I tell you! Daisy was pissed. The dealership could not get the vehicle into the shop to be looked at until the middle of the next week. Vacation had to be cancelled. I screamed, I cried, I cussed. Finally common sense (or vacation greed) set in and I called car rental places for a rental. There was some stupid race in town and finding a car in this town on a Friday morning was like finding a needle in a haystack. I was offered a little compact car. I didn’t like that idea though. Finally the heavens smiled upon me and I was able to find a 2008 Impala with only 100 miles on it. It was the only full sized car available for rent in the entire city. It turned out to be a comfortable car and great on gas mileage. I just keep thinking that the $300 we spent on it could have bought some killer souvenirs or better yet a couple dozen steamed blue crabs. Today we got our Pathfinder back and the problem turned out to be a defective part which was covered by the factory warranty.


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I couldn’t begin to tell you all of the fun things we did on vacation, but a picture is worth a thousand words so I will leave you with a few pictures.


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Funny thing on this pelican, just after I took his picture he sprayed a certain white substance from his hind region all over the pier. We were fortunate enough to just barely be out of harms way. I tell you, this “substance” shot ten feet at least. Ten feet, people! The humanity!


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The hubster and Jas built a killer sand castle, but I didn’t have the foresight to take a picture of it when they built it. I went down to the beach later that night to snap a picture and the tide had already washed it away. Who knew the waves would come that far up on the beach?


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This is a picture of my favorite meal. When we were in Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of NC we had a late lunch/early dinner (which I believe the technical term is Linner) at Dirty Dicks. I am proud to say I got crabs from dirty dicks. (Don’t think about that sentence too long or hard, no pun intended…much). Our appetizer was seafood chowder which was chock full of tender clams, bay scallops and tiny shrimps floating in a bowl of creamy white heaven. Then we ordered a pair of fried soft shell crabs to split between the two of us. And then came my favorite part of Linner; six large steamed blue crabs, sprinkled liberally with Old bay seasoning. They were so tasty that when we finished them we ordered another six. My only regret was that we didn’t order a pound of steamed shrimp and a pitcher of beer. Although I must admit the sweet tea was nectar of the Gods. While we are feasting on this succulent seafood, Jas is munching on an Arbys roast beef sandwich and curly fries. It must be a result of her being a landlocked Hoosier, but Jas is not a fan of seafood. It’s quite sad actually. I don’t know where I went wrong with her. She is still young though so maybe there is hope for her yet.

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Jas will turn seven this Thursday. Hard to believe if you ask me. In fact, I am still in shock that she is old enough to be attending school, much less about to enter the second grade. I was changing her diaper one day and turned around for just a second and when I turned back she had grown up. At least that is the way it seems. Auntie Brooke is tops on Jas’s list right now. Jas was bemoaning the fact that she was bored this afternoon and at that very second the mailman dropped a birthday package off for Jas from Auntie Brooke. Jas was engrossed and enthralled for the rest of the afternoon with all of the goodies Auntie Brooke sent from Germany. Not only the cutest little pug (actually second cutest since Brooke’s pug Booger is the cutest), but she also sent Jas a teeny tiny little toy dog about the size of a quarter. It was adorable. Several types of tattoos were in the bag in addition to jewelry, stickers, gel pens, assorted Haribo gummy candies and the topper – three fart bags. Be grateful I didn’t have the foresight to take a picture of the fart bags. They are sealed bags that have a little device inside that you pop. Within a few seconds of popping it the bag explodes and a fart sound and noxious deadly ripper smell encases the entire area. At least that is what the package says. We haven’t had the nerve to try it yet. Jas is seriously considering letting them off at her birthday party on Saturday. Oh, and another treat Auntie Brooke sent – a five euro bill. Jas doesn’t want to spend it. She is putting it in her special box, which is a memory box for special items like her lost teeth that the tooth fairy pays her for but forgets to take. Jas’s mother was just as enthralled with everything as Jas was. She was calling her one friend (Meg) and her boyfriend and telling them about how cool everything was. She was blown away by the fact that the writing on the items were in German. I hear that when you buy local things in Germany, they usually are in German. Odd how that happens isn’t it? Sorry, it’s late at night and that is my feeble attempt at being sarcastic. I’ll try harder next time.


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Our morning was taken up with shopping today. Since we recently returned from vacation we needed to stock up on some groceries. So Jas and I headed off to the grocery. Jas believes in dressing up and looking her best when she goes out in public, so since she was having a bad hair day she decided to wear one of her many wigs. I know you were thinking she dyed her hair, but trust me, it’s a wig. If this were my daughter Brooke, you would be correct in thinking this was her actual hair because in 11th grade she did dye her hair this exact shade of pink with Manic Panic hair dye. My tub was stained magenta pink for weeks. I was so mad. Then there was the time I came home from work to find that Brooke had started a hair dying business in my upstairs bathroom and had dyed one boys hair green and another blue. There was never a dull moment when Brooke lived at home. Sometimes I really miss that. Other times I am grateful for the peace. Right now I’d gladly suffer the horror of a pink tub just to have Brookie back home.

We’re home finally. But in true Daisy fashion, not without incident. We were driving on I74 a few miles before we hit Shelbyville and were passing a teenage girl in a small red ford ranger pickup. She had pink fuzzy dice hanging from her rear view mirror which made me think of my daughter. She used to have fuzzy dice hanging from her first vehicle. I digress though. As we got directly next to the girl we heard a loud pop and then immediately a flapping noise. Her tire had blown. She fought the wheel to keep from plowing into the side of us and you could tell she was having a hard time of it. She ended up going off the side of the road heading towards a bunch of trees. She turned her wheel just before she would have hit the trees and instead of hitting the trees her truck rolled over twice and landed upside down on the roof of the truck. We saw everything. It was so scary especially when you consider it all happened at sixty miles an hour. We stopped but by the time we stopped we were several yards past her. Several other people stopped which had been behind us. We weren't able to reverse and drive back because the traffic was too heavy. But as soon as the accident happened I called 911 and reported it and within 3 minutes the state police arrived and an ambulance. We were all pretty shook up. The accident was so severe that I was sure the girl was dead. I kept expecting Jas to say “The girl didn’t make it and she is standing next to my window – I see dead people.” Yes, I watched The Sixth Sense one too many times. After we saw that the girl had help we drove up the road a couple of miles and went into Arbys to get a coke and calm down. When we got home I called the sheriffs department and the girl made it. Although I don't see how she could have lived through it I am grateful she did. I'm also grateful she didn't hit us because it was right on Jas's side of the car. What a horrible thing to witness. A horrible end to a nice vacation. And to top it all off, we get home to find out that my oldest son (Jas’s father) has left his alcoholic girlfriend and moved back home. I just want to go back to the beach and forget about everything. Coming home from vacation sucks!

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It’s interesting to observe children meeting other children. We went down to our beach umbrella that we had rented and set up our various implements such as beach chairs, sand toys, towels, bottles of water, puzzle books, mystery books, etc. A family of five set their beach implements up at the umbrella next to us. One of the twin girls came over to Jas and said, all in one long breath, “My name is Sarah, and that is my twin sister Jane and we are six and our little sister is four and our mommy and daddy brought us here to play in the sand and we are staying at this hotel, are you? What’s your name?” “Jas” replied Jas. “Oh, Bye!” said Sarah and off she went to tell her family Jas’s name. Jas looked at me with a serious look on her face and said “That’s Sarah, she’s my friend.” Wow, my head was spinning watching it all. And by the end of the day Jas had about seven other friends and knew the story of each and every person who had rented umbrellas that day. She even told us that the man who was walking up and down the beach all afternoon had lost his car keys that morning in the surf because he had them on a black key fob in his bathing suit pocket and a big wave knocked him down, sweeping his keys away in a torrent of rushing salt water. That kid could work for the CIA.


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I am back dating our vacation memories. While we had wireless internet at the wonderful Atlantic Towers, it was only available in the club room on the first floor and I was having too much fun to take the time to blog from the club room. Sorry, my bad. I am a naughty blogger, I know. But wait till you hear all the fin we had (and are still having). Enough dribble though, let the vacation blogging begin…


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It wouldn’t be a vacation if something annoying and out of the norm didn’t happen to us. First off, I have to say, we LOVE Carolina Beach NC! It is a quiet, relaxing, family beach, unlike the coastal community that the hubster and I grew in. The boardwalk here is a small area of a handful of shops, a snowcone place and a killer donut shop (Britts Donut Shop) that makes glazed donuts while you wait. The ocean is nice and the hotel has an indoor and outdoor pool for when you tire of fun on the surf. We have been having a blast! Until we tried to go to bed on our first night here. I fell asleep like a rock. At midnight I was rudely awoken by the sounds of screaming, laughter and hollering right in front of our bedroom window, which overlooked the hallway. It finally stopped and I started to doze off back to sleep. Next thing I know it happens again. I get up to open the door and ask them to be quiet when it stops. Five minutes later it happened AGAIN! This time I was pissed. I called the front desk. They knew exactly who it was because apparently I was not the only one complaining. They sent the security officer up. We heard him talking to the people two doors down. About five minutes after he left the noise started up again and was even louder. I called the front desk again. The security officer came up again and had a chat with the person right in front of our bedroom window. We eavesdropped. Seems that this fellow had just gotten married on the beach and had rented a block of rooms throughout the 11 floor hotel. The rooms were scattered throughout the hotel and all rooms were having loud noise and were partying loudly in the hallways. This jerk kept arguing loudly that he had been to a wedding last year where they rented rooms in a hotel and no one complained so he thinks that the hotel should just ignore all the many people complaining. The security guard told him many times, firmly, that if he got one more complaint that the entire group in every room would be asked to leave. This was at 1am. We called for the 3rd time at 1:30am because they were screaming “F**K You” in the hallways. Seems that they already had that 3rd complaint prior to our call and had been asked to leave the hotel and were not being given a refund of their money. Tell about 30 drunken young adults that they have to leave the hotel and their party in the middle of the night and you are bound to get some loud and rude sounds as people begrudgingly leave. I think the cops were even called. Even the bride and groom had to leave. Ha ha! I loved it. I like to call it just desserts.


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At lunchtime we get a call from the hotel manager apologizing for the experience of the night before. She offered us a complimentary night and we accepted. So instead of us leaving here on Wednesday to go to Nags Head NC, we are staying an additional day. I am pleased. And when we told Jas we were staying in this lovely hotel where our balcony overlooks the ocean, she was very pleased as well. My ears are still ringing from her shouts of joy. Now if only lobster boy the hubster hadn’t gotten burnt to a crisp today.

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What a crazy couple of days. Actually, what a crazy week. There is nothing so hectic as the week that you prepare to go on vacation. Add variables into the mix such as freaky religious zealot neighbors and you have a recipe for disaster. Yesterday Jas and I went out to lunch with the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor and her ten year old daughter. We were supposed to meet at 12:30 to leave for lunch. After a lovely morning at the Miniature Dollhouse Museum in Carmel, Jas and I came home to meet Deb and Hannah. We waited and waited and waited. Finally when we could wait no more (at 1:30pm) we taped a note to the faith healers garage door stating that we went ahead to lunch and then we started driving down the street. Who should turn into the street just then but the faith healer. Drat! Foiled again! It was almost 2pm when we sat down to lunch at what else but a Chinese buffet. I am sure it is no secret that Chinese buffets are the only places the faith healer will eat lunch at. She likes the all you can eat aspect and certainly puts it to the test. Her ten year old annoying daughter proceeds to interrupt the adults conversation every time Deb or I would try to talk to each other. Deb would just look at her like Hannah was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Hannah would tell her to shut up and she would. The part that really stunned me (although it shouldn’t) was when Hannah told me about a book her mother had purchased her the night before of absurd laws. She proceeds to tell me that it is against the law to give a blow job to a man unless it is after 10pm on a Sunday night. She told me some more laws that were just as crude, but my mind was too numb to remember what they were by that point. And her holier than thou mother sat next to her listening to her ten year old daughter talk about blow jobs and just laughed. It was obvious that she worships her daughter and think of her as a friend and not as a parent. It was like eating lunch with 2 ten year olds both with potty mouths.


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Enough about that crazy cow though. Today jas and I had a very nice day. We started out the day by going to a local music store so I could buy a CD for the trip. After that it was lunch at the dreaded Golden Arches. Yes, the one with the playplace that I dread so much. (shiver)


Click on picture to enlarge and see Jas hiding in the Playplace

After lunch (if you want to call it that) we went to the movies and saw Surf’s Up. We really enjoyed that, although I have to say it was pretty predictable, even for a cartoon. The popcorn was good though and in the long run isn’t that what really counts?



On the way home from the movie we stopped by the snow cone stand and got two super duper juicy snow cones. I daresay I could live on snow cones with no problem at all. I’d rather not tell you how many times we went to the snow cone stand last week but if you add last weeks tally with this weeks tally, my frequent eater card is chock full and we are halfway to another free snow cone. And I am proud to say I haven’t gotten brain freeze even one time yet this season. That in itself is a miracle.



Tomorrow we head off to Carolina Beach NC so you may not be hearing from me for a few days. The hotel has wireless internet but I don’t want to take the laptop out in the ocean and I do plan on spending a large part of the time in the ocean. Don’t worry, I’ll eat plenty of crabs, clams and shrimp for you. And pancreas willing I might even have a beer or two. Happy trails!

No, babysitting for my granddaughter hasn’t done me in, but it sure feels like it. My back has been out all week. I don’t know exactly where it went but if you find it will you send my it back to me? All the pain meds in the world can’t help my back right now. Just time and mini massages from short granddaughters will help.

On Thursday Jas didn’t show up. She had spent the night at her friends house and opted to spent the day playing with her. She was back on Friday though. Friday was yard sale day. Whoo-hoo! Ya’ll know I just loves me a good yard sale. It’s not the act of buying that I like, it’s the act of looking through people’s junk. You can learn so much about a person from looking at their cast offs.


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This morning it was Hobby lobby Monday. We had a 40% off coupon which she proceeded to use for her purchase of Mr. Froggy. She had to work for that toy though because she had to stuff him and sew his back up prior to dressing him. She even had to fill put an adoption certificate. This is her third adoption. If she keeps adopting people are going to start calling her Angelina Jolie.


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My heart was broken on Sunday. My eldest came and picked up his dog, Chloe Michelle, to take her home. We had been watching her for 3 weeks while she recovered from her operation when she was fixed. I miss her so much. I am sick of bonding with his pets. It always breaks my heart when they leave. Jas is sort of glad that Chloe Michelle went home finally. She said I was teaching her dog bad habits. I was feeding her gruyere cheese which we all know smells like dirty, sweaty, gym socks. Jas said to me with indignation, “How could you teach my dog to like stinky cheese Gwanma?” I have a feeling Chloe Michelle would have liked stinky cheese with our without my help.


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Speaking of dogs, my daughter, who lives in Germany, has a new gadget for her pooch, Booger. She bought Booger a stroller. I am not sure I poor Booger will be the butt of jokes or the envy of the other dogs. From the pictures she sent I have a feeling Booger likes the stroller. What will they think of next?

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Yesterday started off chilly and rainy. A good day to see a free movie at our favorite cinema. While Jas was eating her morning bowl of sugar (otherwise known as kids cereal) I went online to see what the free movie was that would be playing that day. That’s when I discovered that the free movie program oesn’t start until NEXT Tuesday. Bummer! Since it was a nasty day, what to do? Off we headed to Michaels for crafts supplies and dollhouse furniture. Then a quick trip to Wally World where I was driven crazy by pleas of toys that were well out of the budget. Jas has a serious case of the gimmes yesterday. I got out of the toy situation by promising lunch at the golden arches of Hell. I may have been better off just buying the toy.


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Yes, lunch at the golden arches was a major sacrifice on my part because not only was it the dreaded grease haven, It was also the one that had the play place in it. Miles and miles of colorful plastic tubular hell. Did you know children’s screams echo to magnanimous proportions when executed in colorful plastic tubes? They do. I happen to know first hand. And may I make a recommendation? Don’t ever look on the floor under the tables in the play place at a golden arches. A pack of wild dogs could eat for a month off the smashed food on the floor of one of those places. And hearing the young mothers call to their offspring, well that was akin to being at the dog park hearing owners call to their errant pooches. Yes, I must admit, I am not a golden arc hers person. And if that means I am considered to be an anti-grease snob, then so be it.

To be quite honest I don’t remember all that we did yesterday. I am so wiped out this afternoon (since Jas left a mere 15 minutes ago) that my brain has turned to mush. I vaguely remember today’s activities. There was the few minutes we spent at my doctors visit, then the trip to Goodwill where we found far too many bargains, next stop the drug store, and then onto Taco Hell where Jas proceeded to eat two bites of her crunchy seven layer thingy before she proclaimed herself full. The hubster says I need to set boundaries before I end up in burn-out by weeks end. I hate to say this, but it may be too later, I am already in burn-out mode. But then I think of the calories I am burning with the extra activities, and the fun we are having (despite the nasty lunches). And I can’t begin to tell you how well I am sleeping at night this week, after the exhaustion by days end. So I guess there are pros and cons to the matter.


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And then there is next Friday. That is vacation! We leave for the coast on Friday afternoon. we've already started packing in anticipation. I can feel the sting of the upcoming sunburn already. Ain’t it great!

Day One of summer vacation and I am already worn out. Of course it could have something to do with the fact that I only got 2 hours sleep last night. Jas ended up spending the night, which wasn’t a problem. And she ended up sleeping in her bed after all so that was nice. I should have had no problems sleeping, right? Wrong. First the bloody dog kept pacing the room and sighing. Then the hubster started snoring. How strange that he should choose last night to snore because I can count on one hand the number of times he has snored during the thirteen years we have been married. When I would get him to stop snoring then the dog would pace again. Eventually at 5am I went into Jas’s room and shoe-horned myself into her little twin bed. Let it be known, she is a bed hog! I have had the worst back ache all day and have been so tired.

Jas and I started off our day by eating breakfast at the golden arches. Yum, grease on a bun, breakfast of champions. After our grease run we stopped by the post office so I could mail a few things. I don’t want to brag (oh yes I do), but Joe at the express counter, has a little flirting thing going with me. I go to the post office quite often, sometimes as much as five times a week. Somehow I always seem to leave with a smile on my face these days.


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After my harmless flirtation with Joe, we headed on over to Hobby Lobby for craft supplies. We proceeded to purchase paint, wallpaper and felt (to be used as carpeting) for the wooden dollhouse. Then Jas wanted to race home to start papering, carpeting and painting the dollhouse. She had a blast with it and I have to say it looks rather nice. We plan to go to Michaels later in the week to look at dollhouse furniture for it. Once we arrived home the dogs started barking like crazy. It seems there was a loose dog roaming the neighborhood. The self proclaimed faith healer neighbor is chasing it so Jas and I go out to see if she needs help. Turns out it belonged to the guy that lives next door to her. She put the dog in it’s back yard and shut the gate. I spend a few minutes chatting with the faith healer and she tells me about the cool yard sale the new neighbor down the street had on Saturday. That would be the same neighbor that I had bought the dollhouse from. She proceeds to tell me that she bought $45 worth of stuff from the woman because she just couldn’t help herself. Oh I was pissed! Remember she still owes me $44 from the trip to the zoo during spring break. You can’t pay me back but you can buy TV trays and dolls made from air fresheners. Crap, I can feel my blood pressure rising again. Here is the grand finale; she tells this new neighbor her hard luck story about how they can’t make ends meet and the neighbor is going to drop by several boxes of designer dresses on Friday for her to go through and pick out what she wants. Makes me want to go and tell the new neighbor a hard luck story myself. I like designer dresses just as much as the next gal and at least I can afford to go somewhere to wear them, unlike the faith healer.

It rained most of the day, and in fact is raining again right now, so we spent the rest of the day working on the dollhouse, making potholders, playing computer games, eating ice cream and watching Sponge Bob Square Pants. Tomorrow she wants to go to the movies to see Shrek 3 again. It’s free popcorn Tuesday so I guess I wouldn’t be opposed to that.

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I met a new neighbor yesterday. I don’t want to jinx things by saying this, but she might actually be normal. I know, who would have thought my neighborhood could ever have a normal person in it? She obviously must have made a wrong turn somewhere. Oh who am I kidding, she is probably just as eclectic as the rest of us on this street. The way I met her was that she was having a yard sale. She must be supermom because she moved in last week and now a week later has a yard sale. Or maybe she is just hard up for money. I bought a wooden dollhouse from her for the low price of only $5. My granddaughter Jas and I will have a fabulous time painting it, hanging wallpaper and putting tiny little furniture in it. I haven’t shown it to Jas yet, but when she arrives Monday morning and sees it she will love it! The really cool part about the new neighbor is that she has a six year old daughter. Now Jas will have someone to play with this summer when I am watching her. Or at least she will for the next two weeks. It seems that the new neighbor and her daughter are going to New Hampshire in two weeks to a summer camp for a month. She said it was a fitness camp. I thought that a little odd since the woman was chunkier than even I am (and that’s pretty darned chunky). Maybe it’s a fat camp and she didn’t want to call it that.



I spent the most fascinating seven hours of my life Friday night watching TV. The Travel Channel aired an episode of Britain’s Most Haunted which was seven hours and totally live. The Most Haunted team was in Philadelphia at one of the most haunted sites in America; Eastern State Penitentiary. I watched from 8:00pm until the show ended at 3:00am. I would sit down and watch it all over again if they aired it again. If you didn’t believe in ghosts after that show then you must be dead yourself. Did any of you catch the show? My biggest regret was that I didn’t go online and look at any of the eight live Web cams they had running in the prison during the show. I tried to go on after the show and they had shut the web cams down. Drat! Plenty of people went to the live web cams though, judging from their messages on the message board that night. And people at home were seeing some pretty scary stuff on the web cams. When the seven hours were up the host of the show Yvette, said that this experience was the scariest one they had ever been on, and believe me they have had some pretty scary experiences. It’s a sad thing when the most exciting experience of my week was a TV show. But there you have it.


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Speaking of exciting, my exciting, exhausting summer of watching my 6 year old granddaughter starts tomorrow. Or so I thought. My son said he would be dropping her off at 7am tomorrow. That’s a little too early for me so I asked Jas if she would like to spend the night tonight so we could sleep in. She was thrilled! The hubster on the other hand is not so thrilled since he will probably be relegated to sleeping in Jas’s room while Jas bunks with me. One of the drawbacks of grandparenthood. I have been busy planning exciting things for Jas and I to do all summer. Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning a couple of those things to the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor and now she wants to come along with her daughter on some of our adventures. I have a feeling we will be sneaking out of the house while the neighbor is still asleep so she can’t tag along. You, however, are more than welcome to tag along, and in fact we insist that you do. Starting tomorrow I will be posting the tales of our adventures each evening along with pictures. Not so much as to entertain you, but more so Jas can look back on it one day and have a reminder of the best summer of her life, the summer she spent with Grandma Daisy. There will be parks to visit, museums, garden tours, playgrounds, matinee movies, swimming, shopping (lots of shopping), crafts, libraries and bookstores, zoos, bike rides down the Moron Trail, girls lunches out, tea parties, and anything else we can think of. So be sure to tune into the same bat channel tomorrow to see how our first day of summer went.

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Our houseguest is still staying with us even though it’s been a week since she was spayed. My son may be taking her home this weekend. We aren’t really certain on that. And we aren’t certain on how long she will be gone when she does go home. Seems that my son’s girlfriend has decided that she doesn’t like the fact that Chloe is one-fourth pit bull. She is ignoring the half of shar pei that her DNA contains, and is focusing solely on the pit bull. Over the long holiday weekend she went on the internet and printed off sheet after sheet of incidents where pit bulls have attacked people. She says that the first time Chloe so much as barks at one of the kids or at her dog she is out of there. (The dog, not the girlfriend) Excuse me, but Chloe hasn’t shown any signs of aggression in the past other than the time she growled when my sons girlfriends dog tried to mount her. So why all of a sudden, is Chloe getting ultimatums? She has been a perfect little houseguest in the week that she has been here. I think this is all part of the universe’s plot to conspire against me and ruin my upcoming vacation. I firmly told my son that vacation is in two weeks and neither he nor anyone else is going to ruin it for us.


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Since the son and his girlfriend have been on the warpath with each other, Jas spent the night with the hubster and I on Wednesday. If it looks like she has blue teeth in the picture above, it’s because she does. No, she isn’t turning into a smurf. She was chowing down on a blue fruit roll-up. We delegated the hubster to Jas’s little twin bed for the night so Jas could sleep with me in our room and watch TV. After she watched her show she turned off the TV, told me she was going to dream about laying on the beach, and promptly went to sleep. The next morning she told me this long and involved story of her dream and how she dreamed she was swimming, playing Putt Putt Golf and having a picnic breakfast on the beach. Yes, Jas is ready to go on vacation. The next two weeks will be the longest two weeks of her life while she waits for our vacation to start.

Meanwhile the hubster and I are making final preparations for the aforementioned vacation. I am doing my part by purchasing additional beach towels, sand buckets and swim rings. And he is doing his part by reserving hotel rooms. Last night we realized he had screwed up on the stay in Carolina Beach NC. He had booked one less night than we needed. He proceeded to spend the next thirty minutes stressing about how it could have happened. He even tried blaming it on me because a couple of weeks ago I had nixed the idea of spending the entire eight days at Carolina Beach, opting instead for four. The point is we had both agreed on staying in Carolina Beach four days but he only booked three days. Finally I had enough of his ranting over how it could have happened. I told him to stop wondering how and start working on correcting the problem. He called and within two minutes had the missing night tacked on to the room reservation. It’s just like a man to spend thirty minutes stressing over something that takes two minutes to fix. Or rather, it’s like my man. I am left wondering if he has always been this annoying and I didn’t notice, or is this a recent behavior trait?

If truth be told, I have been having an annoying, frustrating week. If something could go wrong, it did go wrong. I won’t go into all of the many gruesome and gory details, like bad haircuts, stupid children that I must have dropped on their head when they were babies, barking dogs with odor problems, redneck neighbors and much more, but suffice it to say, I’ll be glad when this week is over. Each day seems to bring it’s own challengers. Take for instance, yesterday. I found out that when amazon.com carries your book, it sets its own price for the book, following a particular formula. That’s all fine and dandy, but they force the book to be sold at their particular price everywhere that it is sold. Again, I thought no problem. Then I found out the price they are trying to force the book to be sold at. $21! I am NOT happy about that! I am searching for a way around the problem. Since the ISBN has already been ordered the distribution package may be too late to change. The only recourse I can see at this point is to delay giving final approval on the book which means it stays at the $13.98 price until I click on the approval button. Therefore I am holding off approving the dummy copy for at least a week. So head on over to Lulu within the next 7 days to get your copy before the price goes up. And afterwards, I would recommend buying it from the Lulu site or from me instead of amazon.com. In fact, if you would like to buy a copy of the book and want it autographed drop me an email. I will send you an autographed copy and you can just mail your check to me. If you don’t want an autographed copy my recommendation is to buy it from Lulu.com. The official address is:
http://www.lulu.com/content/856802

This whole process has been a “learn by trial and error” experience. It has been an enormous amount of fun though. While I am still writing the no-named romance novel (I have five chapters completed), I had the most fabulous idea for another cookbook. I am not going to tell you what it is yet, but I will be working on it for the rest of the afternoon and in fact, most of the weekend. You’ll love it when you hear about it! For now though, you’ll have to remain in suspense. How do you keep a blog reader in suspense? Well...