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.