My uncle, Snolepard, posted one of these cartoons on Facebook the other day.  I hadn’t seen them in a long time and forgot about them.  They are just delightful.  The artist REALLY knows cats.

This is one of my favorites.  I’ll post the others periodically.  Simon’s Cat

I thought I was getting hydrophobia until I looked it up.  Turns out hydrophobia is fear of rabies, and I don’t have that.  What I’m in danger of contracting is aquaphobia. 

Let me explain.

Late this morning, I went into the front bathroom and found a lake of water all over the vanity.  I started to hollar at the kids because everytime I go in there I have to clean up some mess or another. 

So I’m wiping down the pond of water and giving Sassy the run down on how to wash one’s hands without flooding the bathroom, when I feel a big drop of water on my arm.  Then one hits the marble and makes a pretty little “plink” sound.  My brow furrows.  I look up.

“HONEY!” I yell, and then to Sassy,  “Go get your father!”

There is a steady stream of water coming from my bathroom ceiling.  It’s dripping directly on to the sink but also onto the medicine cabinet that sits out from the wall.  From there, the water is running down all over the piles of tchotchkes (Michelle – here is the link) that litter the decorative shelves.

I begged My Honey to let me sell the house without even going up into the crawl space.  But no, he had to look.

First, that involved taking a sword and battling Sassy’s closet where the hatch to the crawl space is located.  I didn’t assist.  Every time I go into Sassy’s closet, my head explodes.  I heard noises coming out of her room that sounded like Fibber Mcgee and Molly’s old radio show.  They would open the closet and a loud cacophony of crap would come crashing out.  Remember it was radio, but you could totally picture it in your head.  Anyway, from her closet came crashing and yelling culminating with, “Clean this sh!t up!”

To top matters off, our cooler was blowing hot air.  And I had a migraine I received on Friday evening from the flashing lights of *&%^#! red light cameras our city is installing in a misguided attempt to “protect the citizens” from red light runners and speeders.  Things were not rosy at the Bright Compound.  I begged My Honey again to let me sell the house.

I checked on airline fares to Greece.

The verdict – so far – is that the galvanized pipe in the crawl space is rusted and leaking.  Also, the crawl space is too small for My Honey to crawl into.  Really “crawl space” is much too liberal a term.  “Slither space” is really more apt.  I briefly considered shoving The Bandit up there.  I even went so far as to explain that he had to stay on the joists so as not to fall through the ceiling.  He and his sister thought I was kidding, but if he’s not going to take the job seriously, then I’m not sending him up there just to screw around and get out of cleaning his room.

My Brother The Plumber is coming by in the morning.  I’ll leave him a key and a blank check – stained with my tears.  I’ll also keep you posted.  I suspect this job will get bigger based on how smoothly the army man incident went.

I  wonder, is there an official word for fear of plumbing? 

The Bandit informed me of a couple of things today.

1. Apparently I am fooling no one, least of all my kids, when I tell people that I’m late getting up in the morning because my alarm didn’t go off.

“No, Mom,” he informed me this morning when I trotted out that tired excuse, “You just keep turning it off.”  The part that bothered me the most was his completely condescending tone.  And it’s not like I have a leg to stand on in the argument.

2.  The kids go to parochial school (something that never ceases to amaze me considering my position on religion) and thus they wear uniforms.  Tomorrow they have a “free dress day”.  The Bandit is very excited about it.  There is a theme for this freebie day – tonight is an ice cream social with a 50’s theme so the powers-that-be are carrying that over into the whole day.  Bandit wanted to wear his swimming suit.  His argument makes sense – it’s free dress and “when you wear a swimming suit you’re dressed.  Aren’t you, Mom?”  Even under the best of circumstances, I can’t imagine him getting away with wearing his Spiderman swimming suit to school.

3.  “Is tomorrow the morning?”  He asks me weird questions like this all the time. 

“I don’t know what you mean?” I tell him.

“Is tomorrow the morning?” he says again like repetition will make the question clearer. 

“There is a morning every day,” I explain.

“Yeah,” he rolls his eyes, “that’s literally how it goes, Mom.  Morning night morning night morning.”  He actually says “literally’.

“Uh huh,” I agree.  I’m still not following this conversation at all.  It seems that he gets the concept, so I don’t understand what the actual question is.

“So is tomorrow the morning?”

“Yes,” I tell him with great emphasis.  That seems to satisfy him and he walks away.  I still don’t get it, and I have a lingering fear that I agreed to something I’m not going to like later.

I just love Shoebox.com.  It has the other brand of snark than I practice, but I appreciate it just the same.

One writer says you shouldn’t smirk at Amish love stories.  They are inspirational and even at times racy, with titles like, “The Fifteen Layers of my Skirt” and “Is That A Lock of Hair I See?”   Also, “I Bet You Have Ankles” and “There’s a Clavicle In There Somewhere.”

Kelli had such a good time at The Bandit’s fifth birthday party at the bowling alley, she decided to have her 40th there also.  A ton of friends showed up and we all had a great time.  Some of us got drunker than others.  I won’t point any fingers but I’ll tell you I was stone cold sober.

Unfortunately, my being sober doesn’t explain my bowling scores AT ALL.

We were all shocked to see that Ava brought her own ball, with her name on it, and her own shoes.  Kelli pointed out, however, that we shouldn’t be surprised to find that Ava would flat out refuse to wear stranger’s shoes.  A very good point, that. 

Just prior to the party, Ava texted me to confirm the location of the bowling alley.  When I told her, she texted back, “You’re joking right?”

“No,” I replied.  “If the party gets crazy we can go outside and get a hooker!”

Ava said that when she and her husband arrived, she thought she’d traveled through a worm hole or something and wound up in Perth Amboy, NJ.

I assured her there would be cake.  I knew for a fact because I had texted Kelli earlier to verify.

In fact, here is the cake.

It’s kind of hard to tell, but her husband went over board with the Over The Hill theme.

The first game Kelli scored a not totally humiliating 135.  Ava had 73 and I limped in with 62. 

We did a little investigating on those damn pins and found they only weight about 3.5 lbs.  They must have magnets in them or Velcro or something.

One of the things that delighted our crowd the most was that after every turn, the score board would tell you how many miles per hour your ball was going.  We all averaged about 11 – 12 mph.  At one point, one of mine scored a whopping 4.9 mph.  I seriously thought we were going to have to send someone down there to fetch it when it didn’t make it the whole way but I managed to get one pin on that one.

The next round of scores had Kelli at 135, Ava at 99, and me at 60!  I really think my apathy had a lot to do with my score.

The games went very slowly as I’m sure you can imagine – what with all the screwing around and all.  At one point, we came to a grinding halt when we lost Kelli to the bar altogether.

Ava wants me to make it very clear that she beat Mr. Ava at least once.

I don’t know how humiliated we should be that Ava and I are both sore from bowling two days ago.  It’s not like we were even trying.  I don’t know if Kelli’s sore or not.  I was too embarrassed to ask her.

This morning we got up late for school/work.  I know.  Shocking!  Sassy tried to get me up at 6:40 but I shushed her and we went back to sleep.  I’m a terrible influence.  So, when I did fly out of bed at 7:20 we were all in a hurry.   First I lied to her about what flavors of danish we had so she was looking at me all askance.  It was purely accidental, but I’m not sure she believed me.

While The Bandit was eating I shoved his shoes on his feet.  When he stood up he complained that there was a rock in his shoe.

“It’s alright,” I told him as I shoved them both out the door and onto the front porch, “we’ll fix it on the way to school.”

Then when we got to school, I made them run down the hall to get to class on time.  I noticed that The Bandit was limping. 

“Mom,” he hollered from way behind me, “you forgot about my shoe!”

“Keep up, honey,” I called back to him while I kissed Sassy goodbye and shoved her toward her class room.  “The lions always get the stragglers.”

We made it to the class room just as the bell rang.  I went to kiss him after I shoved his backpack and lunch box into his cubby.

“You forgot about my shoe!”

I knelt down and yanked off his shoe.  I could hear something in there so I knew right away he wasn’t making it up.  I don’t know what I thought – like he was limping for the pure joy of it or something.  I dumped the contents of the shoe onto the carpet and this fell out.

It’s a Lego Man helmet.  I took the picture next to a small paper clip so you could have perspective.

I’m sorry, Bandit.  Sometimes your mother just sucks.

My Honey and I started off our Labor Day weekend with a trip to the final weekend of the The Tucson Toros, our local AAA baseball team.  There had been a massive monsoon storm around 3pm that lasted for about an hour and brought major amounts of rain and even hail.  And all of that after being informed repeatedly by the weather people that we had a dry, hot weekend in store of us with a 10% chance of rain.  I will not get started on another tirade of weather people.  I promise.  That’s not where this post is going.

I did think the rain would cancel the game, but we took a chance, grabbed both kids and my father and headed to the ball park.  Fortunately, the grounds crew had the chance to cover the field with a tarp so the game was on.  And the weather couldn’t have been more beautiful.  The first inning was 84 degrees and breezy and by the time of they set off the fireworks it was 84 and breezy.  I consider that a perfect evening.

The game was by no means a good one, but it was fun if you’re a Toros fan.  The final score was 12-4 with seven of those runs scored by the Toros in the seventh inning. 

In a moment of inspired Americana, a barbership group consisting of about 20 gentlemen, considerably more than a quartet, sang both the National Anthem and Take Me Out To The Ball Game.  They were delightful.

Sassy and The Bandit each had baseballs autographed by the ball players.  Absolutely none of them is legible, but then again, have you ever tried to write legibly on a sphere?  Sassy even got a photo take with the mascot, Tuffy.

We don’t have a picture with The Bandit and Tuffy.  That’s because this is what he was doing by the 6th inning.  Thank goodness it wasn’t hot out or I’d have been miserable.  That’s me he’s lounging on.

The fireworks were outstanding, but the booming and popping is really, really loud.  It’s right next to the zoo.  I sincerely wonder what the animals think.  I can only imagine the lions are bald and the peacocks featherless.

Last night was Kelli’s 40th birthday.  I took copious notes about her party – all of which I will share with you tomorrow.  Every dirty detail.  Don’t get too excited – it was a 40th birthday not her 25th – which was a lot more interesting – I assure you.  However, I did take good notes and there are embarrassing moments to share – and not all of them are about me for once.

Kelli called me today while I was at work.  She wanted it to be very clear that her cell phone was dead and, should I need her FOR ANY REASON, she could be reached on her home phone. 

I paused.  “OK,” I said.  “Is there anything in particular you were thinking of?”

“Just in case you’re coming to pick me up on your way to Greece, I wanted you to know where I could be found.”

She must have been having a trying morning.  The Sisters do this often: day

This could be us except I'm never flying in a plane with a propeller again

 dream about running away.  Greece is almost always the destination.  We still feel quite proprietary about the place even though our plan to buy it was thwarted.  The economy is still quite rough, and we haven’t given up just yet.  One of us is bound to win the lottery eventually.

Ava is convinced that if we did run away, our husbands wouldn’t blame us.  She thinks they would understand.  I think she is horribly mislead.  I know for certain My Honey would be pissed and there is no way Mr. Ava is letting her escape without him.

Some housekeeping items and random musings today.

It occurs to me that high metabolisms are wasted on the young. 

You may notice that on the top of the right hand column, I have added something new entitled, What We’re Reading Now.  I have a lot of people asking me what I’m reading or to suggest an author or a new series.  So I figured I’d just keep you posted with what I’m reading right now.  I’ll keep it updated as I move through my mountain of books.  I may add the book blurb from the back as well.  I’ll mess around with it and see what I think.  Should I only list the romances that I’m reading or should I include the other genre’s as well?   We’ll see how it evolves.

It is completely and utterly unfair that the restaurant next to my work should smell like bacon and grilling steak every single night when I get off work.  There must be some sort of city ordinance about that.  I’m gonna check on it.

I had the boy at the doctor today.  The poor little dude has the worst allergies I’ve ever seen.  Usually seasonal allergies are manifested in runny noses and eyes, sore throats, congestion, etc.  That I’m used to.  But The Bandit, God bless his little soul, is a wreck.  After about 15 minutes playing outside, he’ll come in and his eyes will be damn near swollen shut.  They are puffy and miserable looking and colored sort of like a reddish bruise.  He literally looks like the losing boxer in a prize fight.  We went to the grocery store tonight with his left eye swollen and bruised.  I felt compelled to tell everyone it was allergies so they didn’t think he’d been beaten.

One more little thought.  I do not have time to teach people how to drive on the way to work.  People – you really need to just wait until 9:30 or 10:00 to leave your houses so that those of us who have places to go don’t have to drive around you like we’re on an obstacle course.

I’ve said my piece.

I’m not a morning person.  It’s ingrained in my DNA and it’s never going to change.  If it didn’t happen the entire time I was growing up, it’s not going to change now that I’m 40.  But it wasn’t from my father’s lack of trying.  He is the worst of his kind – a morning person that feels it’s his duty to spread morning cheer throughout the land.  It was horrible.  He would tease and tickle and poke me until I escaped to go to school.  No amount of gnashing of my teeth would change his mind that just maybe one more joke and I’d join the “light side”.  The “light side” is the exact opposite of the “dark side” of course.  I suspect Darth Vadar didn’t want to get up in the morning either.

So now that I’m an adult and I don’t have someone standing over my bed with a bucket of ice water to ensure I’m up on time, I must rely on an alarm clock.  It’s not always successful.  Especially since My Honey is up for work and gone long before the kids and I have to get up.  I’m dreadfully irresponsible when it comes to gettin up on time.

There is a negotiation that goes on with the alarm clock.  I set it for 6:20 – an over abundance of time to arise and get everyone off to on their days.  Then I hit snooze every nine minutes until I open my eyes and freak out because it’s 7:10.  The negotiation goes like this: If I sleep 9 more minutes then I won’t do my hair.  If I sleep 9 more minutes then I won’t wear makeup.  If I sleep 9 more minutes then I won’t eat breakfast.  Honestly, you should see me some days.  Terrifying – bedraggled and hungry.

Something went awry with the universe this morning.  The alarm went off and I got out of bed.  I went to wake up The Bandit and brush my teeth.  Somewhere along the way back from the bathroom, I caught sight of a clock.  It read 6:23.  6:23!  What!  I thought for approximately seven seconds about getting in a workout before work.  I considered making an actual breakfast with eggs and bacon. 

And then my sanity returned.

I shut everyone’s lights back off and crawled back in bed.   This is a super power of mine – I can go to sleep anywhere, anytime.  My brother and I share it.  It was very useful when we both worked for my father.

I figured I could take all the 9 minutes available to me – especially since I already brushed my teeth.  WaHOOOO – 9 more minutes.