So friggin cute I had to throw this up here!

If you like animals, (and everyone should), you'll like this!

SO CUTE!  I want a 610 Stomper dog, (the dog in the red satin jacket), or perhaps a cool brass band dog because they actually earn tips.  That little Saintsation is such a diva and of course Rex is just so handsome.  Nah, it's the Cafe Du Monde cat for sure.  Who wouldn't want a cat that can make the, imho, purrrfect cup of coffee?

All righty then, I'm outa here.  I promised I'd take mom to Re-store up in Slidell today.

You have to swear to keep this a secret if you read this post!

    I'm going to throw in a quick post while I can. Here are some of our ideas and personally I think they are awesome, but then when it comes to creativity and costuming I tend to have an ego, (I tend to seek out drag queen approval and get it quite often, which of course strokes my ego because nothing, and I mean nothing, is better than drag queen approval.)  Anywho, if you read this you must swear not to let this cat out of the bag because this is TOP SECRET stuff.  Only four people are in on this because it's going to be a big surprise, so if anyone throws a party with these ideas I'll know you told and the loup garou will come in the middle of the night and eat you for being so bad. : )  I added a smiley face to soften the blow, but make no mistake he will come to all bad children and the worse you are the worse you'll get it. : )

     Okay here goes...  We are making the invitations ourselves and are basing them on my treasured Dr. Bob art.  I just can't see paying someone else to print invitations when I can make something nifty that suits my Yat themed party.

     We have Benny Grunch's newest album as our party favors, and they will be placed in little brown lunch bags printed to look like Schwegman's and K&B bags!!!!  (these articles explain it best: Schwegman's and K&B)I don't have a picture because I left them at Mom's house, but if Sis #2's best friend C and her hubby R, are to be believed they are going to go over HUGE.  C&R wanted me to print out a few for them.  Tiny little shopping bags that bring back fond memories!

     Instead of the boring video, we are doing newspapers styled to look like the 176 year old local paper, The Times-Picayune.  We've included articles about the bride's aunt who is famous for her tea in the food section, and advice column by the couple's dog.  My mom really likes this one and has hounded me to finish all the articles, but ideas come when they come and it will be finished eventually.

    There is more, but I'll save that for another day and because my darling J just purchased an iPhone for me yesterday, (He is so sweet!), I will try to work some technological magic and take and post pics!

PS. Y'all should see all the misspelled words on this post!  Apparently local names, terms and monsters don't do well with spell check.

The Deed is Done

This is how I'm feeling.  A little beat up, but quite like the cat that got the mouse.  It's all good. : )

We've booked the venue and paid for it in full, and I'm not sure about her, but I'm pretty sure The Boy hates it.  Oh well.  I'm not losing any more sleep over this and it's a huge relief to have something set up.  The place is cheap and looks like every other cheap wedding hall, which is exactly what we need.  We have put our money into the entertainment which is AWESOME!

Get this, we've booked BENNY GRUNCH, (a local celebrity)!!  Squeeellll!!!  The guy who sings "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day," and "The 12 Yats of Christmas!"  We've taken his "Ain't Dere No More," song and made it our theme.  It's a Yat inspired party, with OMG a possible appearance from, and you've got to be a local and old school to appreciate this one, AL SCRAMUZZA!!

OMG y'all when my most awesome husband suggested Benny Grunch because of all the money we're saving and actually was on the phone I started jumping around, actually hyperventilated and burst into tears.  I called Sis #2 and said, "You have to sit down, are you sitting down?"  I dropped that in her lap and OMG she screamed, "NO WAY, THIS IS MY PARTY NOW!"  She burst into tears and kept repeating "OMG," and "I can't believe it."  Well Mom heard all of this and actually ran up the stairs to see what the heck happened.  She thought someone had died unexpectedly.

OMG y'all this is so FREAKIN HUGE!!!  It won't impress the bride-to-be, but The Boy was raised on Benny Grunch concerts at Rock-n-Bowl and Walgreens Pharmacy.  (The free Walgreen's Christmas Eve concerts, which is sooo appropriately Yat and New Orleans, started after Katrina as a gift to the people of St. Bernard and the lower 9, who had nothing but a Walgreen's for a store.)  We are not telling anyone about this.  It will be just me, Sis #2, J, and Mom who know.  I cannot wait to see the look on my cousins' and other sisters' faces when they walk in and see FREAKIN" BENNY GRUNCH and the BUNCH sittin' in there, (we've invited them to have supper with us of course).  This is gonna be the best Yat rehearsal dinner eveah dawlin'!

This and That

It's 5:30 AM and I've given up on trying to get back to sleep.  I'm hoping this trend of waking up at 4 in the morning is going to end soon.  It's like my mind is going a mile a minute and I can't fall back asleep.  So here I am and this is what I've been up to lately...


Earth Day on Bayou St. John.  I got my tiny activist on and signed petitions for wetlands and water management, purchased marsh grass, donated money for the restoration of the Bayou Bienvenu Triangle, ate well, listened to music, and met Mother Earth.

I got my hair cut like this and because it is so fine and stick straight, it looks just like this but shorter.  Sis #2 also had her hair cut like this, but because her hair is curly, well she sort of looks like we went back to the 80s and she is not pleased.

Went to French Quarter Fest and hung out at my Katrina refuge.

Hung out with cats who were also hanging out.

 Had lunch.

 Sanded and primed this dresser that is going to eventually be peacock blue.

Tended my garden.  Yay strawberry!

Did the bridesmaid's brunch for my son's wedding at The Court of Two Sisters.  Get the grits and grillades and avoid the hollandaise sauce, (way too much salt).

And last but not least, I dug out this little deserted island thing all by myself.  I've got ice cream flavored banana trees, black coral elephant's ear, orange canna lilies, some ugly red and yellow lilies that J. insisted he must have, and to the right a tiny pineapple plant that is supposed to get huge.  Now all I need is some sort of border and some sort of sculpture.  Actually I was thinking a volleyball with a bloody hand print.  I think it would be nice if Wilson had a nice place to rest.  Yeah I'm nuts.  Any other suggestions that would be more sane?

Will your kid be attending Hogwarts this year?

I am so EXCITED!  We are going back to Hogwarts and this time we have a crowd!  Three families to be exact.  The BEST part is that niece #4 is turning 11 on the very day we will be arriving at the park.  OMG I KNOW, RIGHT?!  So y'all know that I have to, HAVE TO, do the acceptance letter.  Well here I was all prepared to shell out $ for acceptance letters when I discovered this freebie!  So I'm sharing it with you.  : )

http://www.mediafire.com/?tap52725wt7ft

Download the three components and follow the instructions, (one of the downloadable components).

Now I can do this for all the kids on our first morning in the hotel and I'm planning on sprinkling a few "owl" feathers about just because setting out letters isn't flashy enough.  Oh my, what if I printed scads of letters just like what happened to Harry?!

Oopsie.

4 fire trucks, a cop, an ambulance, and the fire chief

     Okay so the guy a couple doors down is always burning something in his yard and sometimes his little fires aren't so little.  Today when the wind is brisk we saw, had a HUGE fire going.  Huge like 12 to 15 feet high huge.  And while we were quite irritated with how irresponsible it is to have a twelve foot high bonfire in your back yard, we figured it was just business as usual for this guy.

     We watched the fire burn for about 10 to 15 minutes.  Suddenly the next door neighbor's son pulls up and starts running and pulls out his cellphone.  Well our bad.  It seems we watched the guy next door to Fideaux's shed and fence burn to the ground.  If it hadn't been for P. the house would have gone next.  Talk about feeling like a bit of a shit head on this one.

     New Orleans has a live and let live kind of culture so when someone does something weird or stupid as long as it's not hurting anyone or anything, you just kind of let it go.  So unfortunately we just let it be.  Thank God no one was hurt except the fence, the shed doesn't count because the neighbor was tearing it down which was the reason there was a fire in the first place.  Apparently when you pull down a shed and leave all the chemicals inside they intermingle and cause a fire.  BTW the phone lines melted.

The War Begins...

     It is time for my annual war with nature.  My veggie garden is planted and ready to go to hell in a hand basket, (Always the optimist, I am.).  Every year for the past six years, we've lost out veggies and fruits.  I don't know why I even try any more, and yet every year a few hundred dollars go into prepping, plants, and plots, (See what I did there?  Alliteration, yay.), only to see that the bugs and wildlife eat well.

     This is a stink bug.  They are evil.  They have eaten my tomatoes for the past two years.  Apparently I grow tomatoes for stink bugs and raccoons.

     This is the damage a leaf miner brings.  They also are evil.  Last year they ate the leaves off of my tomatoes.  This year they are trying to eat the leaves off of my little satsuma tree.

     This is a raccoon.  They are of course evil, cute, but evil.  For the past six years they have eaten my tomatoes, watermelons, satsumas and grapes.  They have not eaten the broccoli, jalapeno peppers, and okra.  They do like to pick the sweet pepper and throw it at the house (seriously).  I figure they do that just because they know we are at war.

     We've put up a fence between us and the swamp/woods and moved the garden to the front of the property.  We thought it would help with the stink bugs and the raccoons.  Yesterday there was a stink bug just over my mirliton plant on our newly raised fence and a raccoon on the patio eating cat food and giving me the middle finger.  I losing and the war hasn't even started.  Anyone else have a garden yet?

Did I mention?

Did I mention that my son is getting married in September?  I have to get a dress and apparently it has to be a short one.  The mother of the bride and the bride's maids all are wearing knee length dresses.  This sort of bums me out because I would LOVE to wear a long dress.  I would love to wear this four thousand dollar navy blue dress, (let's all laugh at that one).

In case you didn't know I'm 4 feet 9 and 1/4 inches tall, (the exact same height as my very Cajun grandmother thank you very much).  There is no such thing as running out and buying a dress when you are my size, which is roughly blueberry because I'm about as tall and round as one, (I gain weight in my stomach and lose it in my boobs.)  So I try things on whenever I'm in a store on the off chance that inspector number 8 missed the fact that cutter number 12 went too short on a pattern on any given day.  And yeah that does happen.

The other day I was in Goodwill and on a whim went through the formal dresses rack.  Holy cow I found a royal blue long dress that if I lost 20 pounds would look fantastic on me.  Now for the even more amazing part, the thing fit from my neck to my waist, (usually there is this big lump of material because everything is six inches longer), and now for the miracle...  I cost me five dollars!!  FIVE FREAKING DOLLARS!!

I'm going to have to cut it short, but I'm going to make that adorable little jacket you see on the dress above, (my bingo wings need some sort of sleeve), and I'm going to bead the heck out of it.  Now I've really gotta work on the weight loss, but guess what?  I've got that covered too.  I've signed up for a zombie run run in June, (I'll be the zombie of course.)

So between my Wizarding World of Harry Potter visits, (Did I mention I got season tickets as the most AWESOME Christmas gift ever?  No?  Well I'll have to do another post on that because we've already been three times this year!), and my zombie run I should lose some weight right?

OH MY GOD!!!!!!

     It's 2AM ish and I've had one of those freak you out icky dreams where you wake up angry at your totally innocent spouse, but you want to kill him/her anyways.  Don't turn off the TV on me and head up to the room where you live with your old flame, in a house full of rock and roll, goths doing laundry and expect me not to tear up those, learn how to be a paralegal, binders Mister.  Grrr.

     I'm on the phone today with Sis#3, (my SIL), and we're talking garage sales and complaining about the usual when all of a sudden she says, "Oh my God!"  I'm all like, "What?"  #3 repeats a bit louder, "Oh My God!!"  To shorten this a bit let's just say I continued asking, "What?" for each, "OH MY GOD!!!"  About three, "OH MY GODs," into this, she begins hysterically screaming in obvious fear and I've got a really bad feeling something is horribly wrong.  Suddenly it sounds like she turned up the car radio so loud that I can no longer hear her screams and then it goes quiet.  I'm like, "WTH?  Are you okay?"  #3 answered, "Yes.  We were almost hit by a train."

     #3 and her hubby were pulling a trailer filled with her new exercise equipment, and had to cross a railroad track.  The stop light had gone yellow and the car in front of them stopped which had them leaving their trailer on the track.  All of a sudden they hear ding, ding, ding, and the bar that blocks off the traffic slams down on the exercise equipment.  They can't move forward because there is a car in front of them and the bar is pinning the trailer in place.  So #3's hubby does a pull over to the side which rips the metal railroad bar off of the pole.  They just missed the train.

     The light goes green and they head off with the traffic, all the while I'm asking questions.  When I realize what's happened I tell them they need to pull over and call the railroad, the police, or the railroad police.  It's at this point where they get pulled over and I tell #3 call me back and let me know what happened.

     The first cop was a jerk and was going on about them doing a hit and run.  Maybe it's me, but common decency dictates that you should ask if anyone was hurt and realize that ain't nobody thinking nothing after almost getting hit by a train, but "Crap, we're ALIVE!"  Of course #3's hubby is repeating, "OhmyGodI'mgoingtojailandIwasalmostkilled."  When #3 starts to tell the cop it was more like they were hit, hubby tells her to hush because this cop is so angry.  When the third cop showed up, the professional one, he said he was glad that no one was hurt and listened to their version of what happened.  God bless all good cops who have cool heads and the ability to listen before making judgments.  No ticket was written.  No one went to jail.  It did not, however, end well.  The exercise equipment was damaged and they were informed that they were going to have to pay to replace the railroad bar thingie.

     So I tell Sis #2, (my little sister), and mom what happened and #2 starts laughing and said, "Oh my God, I called #3 today and she sounded so tired and depressed and irritated, so I asked her if everything was okay and she said, 'you have no idea...'  Sis #2 and I always find the total understated manner of #3 hysterical.  Me, I'm a drama queen and would have repeated the story in full detail along with the imho mandatory description of how I had to clean my underwear afterward.  Sis #3?  Well not so much.

Sorry it's now 3:30AM ish and I'm just not into proofreading.  My anger has ebbed and dear J is soundly sleeping unaware that I wanted to skin him alive an hour ago.  Night night.

So half of your face is paralyzed...

     Okay so this is me, I blurred out my eyes in the hopes that no one recognizes me.  Pardon the hair it was windy.  Look at the crooked nose and stupid leer.  This is my attempt at smiling.  The nice part is that I have no wrinkles on the right side of my forehead.  I can now twitch the corner of my mouth, and weakly close my eye, but my lips and eyebrow still won't move.  Oh and did I mention I can barely taste my food?
     I notice I'm getting that extra polite look when I have to talk with strangers.  I notice that I'm covering my mouth and nose with my hand when I laugh.  I notice I am not wanting to eat in public.
     I once knew a wonderful woman who was everything kind and caring, who had had a brain tumor.  The operation left her with nerve damage that screwed up her mouth.  She said she would love to have her smile back.  She would pull on the other side of her mouth to try and even it out a bit and would cover her face when she laughed.  I never viewed her as anything but wonderful and I felt that all those cover ups were not necessary.  Now that I am in a similar position, well, I understand better.

The week my body went apeshit crazy.

Not much of a costume, and the pic doesn't show the blue hair and bling on the mumu, but it was quick and easy.  

   
     I had a blast on Mardi Gras.  Too much of a blast.  It seems that my legs aren't twenty-something any longer and object to twelve hours of walking and dancing.  To make a long story short I'll just say that for two days I could not bend my knees.  Really.

    Valentines day the dog we've been watching escapes (I was at Mom's house), and began playing that age old idiot dog game of chase me.  There we all were, me, Sis  #1, Sis #2, Nieces #4 & 5, and Mom, running about in the street in our jammies and of course I can't bend my knees.  Sis #1 turns to Sis #2 and says, "there goes Frankenstein."  Okay yeah, so Frankenstein, (me because I can't bend my knees), is out in the middle of the street in cow slippers when a cop shows up to serve papers to one of the neighbors.  Now we've got a cop watching all this go on and he, bless his heart, jumps into the fray.  Sis #2 is in the car driving along side the dog, and I'm doing my best to just walk thinking Miss J. is going to be beside herself if I lose her dog.  Niece #5 caught the dog with bacon and the cop left laughing at either the chase, my walk or the slippers; not sure which.

Fast foreword a few days...

     Life has gotten back into a routine after Mardi Gras and I'm painting a bedroom at the condo when suddenly my eye tears excessively.  I wipe it away and go on with my day.  I get back to Mom's and make kisses at the cat when I notice half my lips don't work.  I check it in the mirror and one half of my lips look skinny and the other half looks swollen.  WTH?  The next day Sis # 2 and I are shopping at Goodwill and laughing over some silly something or another when she starts laughing even harder.  Half of my face isn't working and when I grin, it pulls my nose to the left.  I go look in the mirror and holy Gotham Batman, I look like a stroke patient.

     It took a couple of days, but they managed to talk me into a doctor.  J, bless his heart, has been so good to me.  He has laughed his ass off at my stupid looking face, and we came up with all kinds of different ways to prank people.  I don't want someone getting all serious and worried when I'm like this.  The more inappropriate the better.  I've got Bell's Palsy so pretty much I look like this guy...

     Oh well I'm going to look at it like this, people pay for Botox right?  I have the right side of my face paralysed for free.  BTW the eye patch I have to wear at night, (my eye won't close all the way), will definitely lure in all the local pirates.

When cat people have to care for a dog.

     Our dear neighbor Miss J. has had an attack of appendicitis and has to have surgery.  We have been charged with the care of her dog Sadie.  The only problem is that we are cat people.  I know you have to let dogs out to go make poop, but how do you know when they need to go out?  How often do they need to go out?  These are questions that we just can't answer.  So far we've cleaned up one poop mess.  So we decided to let the dog out for a couple of hours to ensure no further poop mess.  When we went next door to let her back in, we found this:

Sadie getting an unwanted bath.

Sigh.  I don't know how dog people do this dog thing.

The Dog Days of January

     Um, well despite me saying I was going to do a post last Sunday, things started happening not two minutes later which led to me abandoning my computer and heading to the French Quarter.  Who could turn down a free breakfast at Cafe du Monde and a dog parade?  When I found out our dog nephew, Bacon, was going to be in the 2013 Barkus parade I just had to go.  We were so proud of Bacon who was looking so lovely in his tutu and float.  Please note that the pic is not of Bacon because J has Bacon's pics in his phone and I haven't gotten them on my computer yet.  We were also very proud of Sis #3's sis-in-law, H. who was just as wonderfully loud and celebratory as can be!

  

     It's been a somewhat mild winter although it's gotten cold enough for our little crepe myrtle alley to have lost all it's leaves...

     but, the hibiscus says it's ready for spring.

     I'm not ready for spring.  Really it's so nice with the highs in the 60s and 70s, (actually I prefer the highs in the 70s please.), that I dread all that heat and humidity and the electric bill that goes along with it. 

     We've got something in the works for the Superbowl this weekend.  I suspect Roger Goodell won't like it. 

Blog Vacation

Wow it's been a good long while since I've touched this blog!  Sorry 'bout that, but I stalled out.  It's a new year and well I think I want to start this little blog up again.  I was struggling with trying to keep up with the thing and between trying to marathon finish mom's new home and put her condo up for sale I damaged my right hand.  Apparently if one has carpal tunnel she should not use the palm sander for more than eight hours straight.  The doctor put me on three different steroids which made me angry, no really, I turn into a monster on those things, and get really hungry.  Good bye weight loss and hello permanently numb index finger and thumb.

Anywhoo I lost the will to blog.  I felt like I had to blog with the whole weight loss thing and honestly it became a chore.  I hear that one should pick a direction for a blog and stick with it, well I can't do that and I'm not going to try to do it any longer.  This isn't a blog for weight loss or fashion or how to raise children, this is a blog just because I want to write stuff.  So here I am back to where I started, just writing stuff.  Stuff.  (Ha!)   : )