So, it’s been busy here.  I suppose it’s been busy where ever (or when ever) you are.

Christmas came and went; New Years came and went.

We survived.

Did you?

Let me tell you about our December.

Everything was going fine; busy but fine.  Presents were thought about (and eventually purchased); baking was in high gear; the house was all decorated and the tree put up.

Then, a Monday.  Like most Mondays, it started out in the morning.  By afternoon, it was a monster Monday.  The Boy had taken the car to school and wanted to get The Girlfriend her Christmas present – not an unreasonable request.  I told him he could go to the mall and come right back home as I needed the car later in the afternoon.  About ten minutes later, he called again.  This time he said something that didn’t quite register.

“Mom, I was in a car accident.  I’m fine, I called the police and they are here now.  I have to go.”

Hmmmm… what was that? I was sideswiped – it took a few minutes for me to get my brain to wrap around what he just told me.

Long story short – he slide on some black ice, took out a telephone pole, had to go to the emergency room as I could not get to him without my car, the car got towed, The Hubby & I were worried and scared at the same time.  After we got to the hospital and saw he was fine, we went to the auto shop where the car had been towed.  The car was not so fine.

We’re up to 12K in damages and looking at the end of January before it is ready.

Yeah, exciting, huh?

And you haven’t even heard what happened the Monday after that!

I’m not talking the canned meat here…

here is one of the spam comments on this blog today:

Do chickens think rubber humans are funny?

My guess would be, yes, chickens DO think rubber humans are funny.  And maybe someday (not today… too cold and too much snow) I will ask my mother’s chickens if they want a good laugh and show them a rubber human…then I will know for sure if chickens think rubber humans are funny.

Today is Freedom Day.  Not freedom from taxation, but something almost as good.

Freedom from Braces.  The Boy is Free From His Braces.

Yippee!!

It seems soooo loooonnnngggg ago he got them on.  It was three or four decades years ago, when he was just a cute little pre-teen.  And now, he’s a full fledged teen, complete with straight teeth.

How we both hated going to those appointments.  He hated wearing the rubber bands (which might explain why it took soooo looooonnnnnggggg to be done with them).  I hated seeing the rubber bands everywhere – the tv room, the bedroom floor, the bathroom, the laundry.

But today, he is FREE.

And to make the day even sweeter, he got to drive to the appointment by himself.  Yes, world, The Boy has his drivers license.  Ordinarily, a parent might be tempted to tell the world to watch out for their new driver, implying this new driver has no skills and ought to be locked up instead of allowed to drive.  You will hear no such thing from this parent.  My kid went to Drivers Ed.  My kid drove with a licensed instructor for four hours, practicing onramps, traffic flow, parking, backing up, etc.  My kid drove ME everywhere (but not crazy) while he had his permit.  He GOT UP all by himself for school just so he could drive in while he had his permit.  He was willing to go almost anywhere so he could practice driving.

He took his test and passed on the first try – no repeat of the test needed.

And off he went.  He’s been going to friend’s houses, The Girlfriend’s house, school, the store … he even picked up dinner for me and The Hubby a few times.

Freedom is freakin’ awesome!

knock, knock… anyone there???  Seems my dedicated readership of two has dwindled to none.

Drats.

This is not like, a dream I am aspiring to – I want to make that clear.  This is just a dream I had last night, and like most dreams, you may wonder what it means, but it is just a dream.

I was sitting in the back seat of the car.  I believe The Hubby was driving and The Boy was sitting next to me.  But I also had a bundle in my lap – a wiggling little bundle, that when it wiggled around to face me, showed me his beautiful little baby face.  You parents out there know what I mean – the absolute beauty and joy of a baby’s face looking at yours, recognizing you, stopping and staring at you.

Now, in reality, that baby of mine would be in a car seat, no matter how young he was.  But this is a dream, and in dreams the rules of reality don’t necessarily apply.  We were driving on the road, and I just had this little guy wrapped up in a blanket on my lap.  He started to wiggle some more, turning his body towards mine, as if he was looking for something.  Instinct kicked in for both of us; I lifted up my shirt and he started to nurse.

What almost woke me up out of the dream was the overwhelming sense of joy and peace when he latched on.  It startle me with such a jolt – I truly hadn’t expected to feel that.  But I pulled myself back into the dream to continue to nurse him, to see his eyes look up at me and to smile at me.

But…reality interrupted.  I heard some little girl throwing a temper tantrum.  It got louder and louder until I was fully awake and realized the tv was still on.  I’ve never seen it, but I am pretty sure it was The Little Princess.  Don’t ask me what it was doing on at 2 in morning – I’m not in charge of scheduling on Starz.  I started to watch it a bit of it (I was awake, remember) and thought to myself, I really have no interest in this movie, I’d rather go finish my dream.

So I snuggled back into my comfy flannel sheets and fluffy comforter and closed my eyes.  It doesn’t ususally work, but sometimes I can get back into a dream.  Tonight it worked, although not for long.

I was back in the car, although the baby was done nursing.  We were still driving, and he was still in my lap.  Suddenly there was gun shots fired into the car (great way to get back in the dream, right?)  I dove to the floor of the car, trying to protect the baby.  I wondered where the driver and passenger (the ones I assumed where The Hubby and The Boy) were… because I was alone in the car with the baby.

After that little scene, I have no recollection of what happened.  I don’t know if I woke up and lost the dream, or if it just stopped there, or if it kept going and I just don’t recall it.

But I still remember that amazing sense of joy when the baby first latched on.  But it is just a dream, not the kind of dream I am trying to make reality.  I am definitely done with having babies.  The Boy just turned 16 this summer – to have 17 years between siblings is too much.  I am done with diapers and midnight feedings and teething, but that also means I am done with holding a baby, breathing him in and holding him close.

I was a shy little girl growing up.  There’s tons of proof about it, too…

Here’s a picture (date unknown) of me, my two brothers, a foster sister, and two girls we sponsored from the Fresh Air Fund.  Can you guess who is who?

From the left: my brother Kris, me hiding in his lap, Emma from the Fresh Air Fund, my brother Karl, our foster sister Kelly in the lap of Sharyl, from the Fresh Air Fund.

Everyone in this photo is happy to pose for it… they even smile when they are directly looking at the camera.  Me, I’m busy studying my fingernails or something as equally as fascinating.  At least I’m not sobbing my eyes out while be forced to look directly at a stranger!!  And no, my parents didn’t scare me to death with Stranger Danger tales that made me afraid of strangers.  I was an equal opportunity scaredy cat… any adult would do.  I never looked at any of my parents friends directly – I always stole glances at them while they weren’t paying attention.  I never looked at any adult from church directly either – especially if it was the choir director trying to get my attention so I would actually sing the song the children’s choir was doing.  I might have possibly looked directly at the teachers – but you were supposed to do that or you’d get in trouble for not paying attention.  And I was…NOT…going…to…be…in…trouble….EVER!!

You could have pushed me over with a feather earlier this week.

Greg Vaughn is out as General Hospital’s Lucky Spencer.  Changing cast members happens often enough, but hardly ever do you get the original actor back, so when that news was followed by the news that Jonathan Jackson was coming back as Lucky …wow!

I re-started watching GH when I was still pregnant with The Boy.  I sucked The Hubby into it for awhile, too.  I loved watching Luke and Laura come back to the show with their son.  And he had great storylines… travelling from Canada to NY on his own, becoming friends with Emily, being a friend for Liz after she was raped, realizing he really loved her and wanting to plan a future together.  Then Jonathan decided he wanted to spend time doing other roles and other artistic pursuits, so he left the show.  The writers had his apartment burn down, and Liz suffered regret as she was told it was a candle that started the fire… the candle he had lit for her.  Luke and Laura couldn’t hold their marriage together; and Luke’s friendship with Sonny ended bitterly as Luke placed some blame on Sonny (it was Sonny’s garage that had an upstairs apartment he was letting Lucky use against his parents – or at least against Laura’s – wishes). But… some of the last scenes we ever saw of Lucky was him held against his will by Faison and Helena, so there was always hope he’d come back.

Since good characters never die on a soap…  they did bring Lucky back, but not Jonathan Jackson.  Jacob Young was brought on as the “brainwashed” Lucky… a pawn in Helena’s continuing revenge on the Spencer family.   After awhile, it was clear the role just wasn’t clicking, so they let Jacob go and hired Greg.  Greg was able to bring some maturity to the role, but lots of Lucky fans thought the writers were shortchanging the character (one could argue they do that with all the characters, especially those that have been on the canvas for more than 5 years).

And today’s soap site posting were filled with even more news…. James Franco (a.k.a. Harry Osborn in Spiderman) will be visiting Port Chuck!!

Looks like I’ll still be watching!

Chewie hasn’t been himself lately.  He’s been biting and chewing at his back end/tail area.  So much so, that he has torn out fur and been biting right on his skin.  The Hubby went out a few nights ago and got him some spray to calm the irritation and an “E-Collar”.

Now, you might be tempted to think an E Collar is somehow shaped in a similar manner as the letter E.  You’d be wrong.  It’s one of those horrible collars so animals can’t lick or otherwise get to a sore spot.  Of course, this makes it incredibly funny to watch.  At first, Chewie would only walk backwards.  Then, miraculously, he figured out how to move forward again.  But then he couldn’t sit down.  Once he figured that out, he still wasn’t sure if he could lay down.  Eventually he figured out he could lay down – just like he always had, only with this stupid piece of plastic in the way.  Although he realized there was no way he was getting under the bed with that stupid thing on.

So it just so happened that Pansy had a vet appointment today to get her rabies shot.   Since Chewie is a bad patient at the vet’s, I make The Hubby take him; thus, I am off the hook and only have to take one dog at a time.  The vet and the vet tech are both super nice, and start off by asking how Pansy is doing (although they forgot to ask how I was doing).  I said that she was fine, but Chewie was having some problems.  I told them about his itching and licking, and mentioned that I had just today seen a few fleas on Pansy, but not Chewie.

Apparently Chewie is having an allergic reaction to the fleas.  It’s not the flea bites that are irritating him, it’s the mere presence of the fleas and their saliva.  The vet used the analogy of a person being allergic to bee stings.  Gee, I can totally sympathize now, huh?

So Frontline was recommended.  I’ve purchased Frontline before and remembered it was horribly expensive at the vet’s.  So I told them I would buy it at a store and just paid for Pansy’s rabies shot.

Well, you can buy Frontline at the store — if you use their online store.  Most of the big pet care chains — cough, cough, PetSmart, Petco — either don’t carry it or only have it online.  I got some decent pricing at 1800PetMeds, but it’s Friday and it wouldn’t even ship until Monday – so it’d be mid week before there was any relief.  The pricing at Costco was great, but we’d have to renew our membership for $100 to buy the stuff at the cheap price.  We did manage to find it at the pet store at the mall – the same place we bought Chewie, actually.  So, $112 later we have one box of Frontline Plus for Dogs and one box of Frontline Plus for Cats.  I opted for the Plus version since it has more killing power.  And basically, you want as much killing power as you can get when dealing with fleas.  Plus it will keep those nasty ticks away.  I will order some (much) cheaper Frontline Plus online and not have to worry too much about the shipping times.  Hopefully I will just have to do it for the next 3 months and then, with a little luck and the onslaught of winter, the fleas will disappear instead of my money.

So as The Hubby and I were driving home from the mall, I looked at the package.  And I swear this is the truth – the packaging used the word “bitches”.  As in, this product is safe to use on pregnant, lactating and breeding bitches.  I mean, how often do you get to see that on a package?  So I look a little further.   The manufacturer of the product is Merial, a company based in Duluth, GA.  But — it’s manufactured in France.  Figures!  Only the French could get away with that wording on their packaging…

One of my most favorite movies is Dirty Dancing (1987).  When it came out on video (remember VHS?), I was working at a video rental store (remember when you went to small, locally owned video stores?  Yeah, I worked at one of those).  The biggest perk of the job (other than watching movies AT work) was getting advance copies of movies.  After all, the owner theorized, how could his employees recommend a movie if they hadn’t seen it?

So there I was, in college, working part time at the video store and The Fiancee (now starring as The Hubby) was on the West Coast on a temporary assignment.  So I had tons of time to watch movies.  I think I watched Dirty Dancing twice a day for a week.  I could quote it, scene by scene.  The only thing I couldn’t do is the dance moves.  “Look, spaghetti arms. This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine. You gotta hold the frame.”

Then:

Steel Dawn

Road House

Next of Kin

Ghost

Point Break

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

Forever Lulu

11:14

And now Patrick Swayze is gone.  At age 57, pancreatic cancer won out.

All right, pop quiz. Airport, gunman with one hostage. He’s using her for cover; he’s almost to a plane. You’re a hundred feet away… Jack?

Wait, no, it’s not that pop quiz… it’s more of a water quiz, not a “pop” quiz…

Can you tell the difference between the single water bottle and the case of water bottles below?

Some obvious differences:

1) one vs. many: one bottle is less than a case of water

2) brand: the single bottle is Aquafina and the water in the case is Poland Springs

3) size: the Aquafina is actually abit larger than the Poland Spring bottles

The non-obvious difference:

4) price: $4.25 vs. $3.99.  Guess which one is which…. go on, I dare you.   Yup, the Aquafina bottle was $4.25 while the CASE of Poland Springs was $3.99.  The magic difference??  The place of purchase.   I bought the Aquafina at a movie theater.  And they wonder why movie attendance is down???

When we went to go see Inglorious Basterds, we went to the matinee show – so for the three of us is was about $20 for tickets.  Then we got some goodies… which we know will be about the same as the ticket price.   But I forgot to get The Hubby his water, so I had to go back and get it.  And heard the single pricing for the single bottle.  And about died.  I just paid more for one bottle than I paid for a case of THIRTY TWO bottles.   This totally justifies me sneaking in candy and just buying “fresh” (ha!) popcorn.