What It Is

It's been a hectic and frustrating 3 weeks since I last posted. A lot has happened that has just had me completely distracted: I found out my pelvis is rotated - ouch! - gotta have special wedges to lie on to fix that; I had a root canal; I burnt my leg on the tail pipe of the bike - NEVER done that before; I caught a summer cold, the heat and humidity is totally out of control, I got my computer back from Geek Squad (minus a couple of parts), I am on the outs with my mother-in-law again (what a surprise!), and I now have a store on Etsy. Now I will attempt to tie all that mess into a coherent blog post, hee hee!

My mother-in-law; I'm not going to go into a lot of detail as I like to keep things positive. Yeah, we all know that life isn't always positive and uplifting, but I don't see the need to wallow in the negative, so I won't  :)  When I said that I'm on the outs with my mother-in-law, I really meant that she is on the outs with me. She is frequently just flat mean to my boys, she bad-mouths me to them, and she pumps them for info; how much time I spend on the computer, do I cook for them or make them get their own food, clean the house, do laundry...stuff like that...very much like a sitcom...hmmm, lol.
She has accused me of 'wearing the pants' in our house, which I find hilarious because if she really knew her son, she would be laughing too. But, what her accusation does for her is shift the blame of any given occurrence of non-compliance by Bobby from him to me. She also makes stuff up when it suits her, which is what has caused this most recent unpleasantness. The bottom line here is that with my mother gone, I and my boys should be able to count on her, and we can't. So I'm done trying to patch up this non-existent relationship, done with accepting insincere apologies, done with eating her burnt, dry dressing at holiday dinners! It is what it is.

And moving on to a much happier topic; I'm so happy to have my computer back :)  It was the graphics card - the built-in fan on the card went out and the whole card was a pile of melted slag on the floor of the computer tower. It was an add-on, so they removed it and I'm making do with the factory one until I get a new one. I had left a DVI adapter connected to it because when I disconnected the monitor, I couldn't get it off, and I left the power cable attached. Guess what my computer came back without? Yep, no power cable and no adapter. I did get them back, though.

My back is finally feeling some better, so I got the computer all hooked up last night, and the next couple of days will be spent getting it updated, etc. And I need it because I am selling Etsy shop graphics on Etsy. Gary's wife Barbie makes fabulous beaded jewelry that she sells there, and she thought I should make and sell banners, etc. So I am, and we'll see what happens :)

Last Friday Mike & Angie and family came over to our house for a cookout, and they brought some yellow squash and zucchini from their garden and it was wonderful! I was out of olive oil, so we sprayed it with olive oil Pam and put salt, pepper and garlic on it and threw it on the grill. Very tasty! Angie also brought over some home-canned bread and butter pickles that were really good. I don't usually care for that variety, but I really liked them. She said she did some dills also, and she would bring me some. Yum! We have both been trying to find a good and simple recipe for peppered dill pickles - there was a lady here in town that used to make them, but she is gone, so we're trying to figure out how to do it. She cut her cucumbers thick and she used fresh dill sprigs, and little red chili peppers, and an assortment of seasonings, and omgosh! they were awesome!! Of course the first time I had them, I was pregnant with Sully, but I had them again after that and they were still awesome, hee hee. So, if anyone has a good, personally tried and true peppered pickle recipe they would like to share, either send me an email or leave it in the comments. 

Ok, I'm going to leave off with a little pearl of wisdom from my 6 year old: "Did you know that girls don't have pee-pees? Nope, they have ra-gi-nas."

Reunions, Puppies and Brownies, Oh My!

Every five years something happens here that hardly happens anywhere else, and it's a big deal. It's called the All Class Reunion and I'm told that our town is one of the few that does it. All motel rooms in 3 other towns were full as well as those here.  I didn't go to school here, but I usually go along with my husband. Oddly enough, I've never been to one of my own. I was in Georgia for my 10 year reunion, and before the next one, I had moved to Kansas. They might have done a 5 year, but I don't recall it, or what I was doing...hmmm...

Last weekend was the big reunion, and everyone got to see everyone. There were slideshows displayed on building walls, several homegrown bands playing at various locations, quiet (and some not-so-quiet) get-togethers in homes, pubs, parks, two beer gardens - just about everywhere all over town. And it was HOT! We were in the middle of a heat advisory which had been going strong all week. That's a lot of hot sweaty people. 

After coming home from his class get-together at the pub, my husband said the sweetest thing to me. He told me he was SO grateful for me and for things that didn't work out. His big crush in high school had been there - roaring drunk -  and it was not a pretty sight. Wonder if anyone got any video??

I mentioned a ginormous new puppy recently, so I thought it would be good to post a picture of him.

and for perspective, here he is with my full-grown Bassett Hound, Ruby Sue

These were taken last week or so, and he's bigger now. He's now 9 weeks old.

The boys decided on Toby for a name. We kind of wanted Schultzie (from Hogans Heroes) since he's German, but the boys didn't like it. They didn't care that he was German,and they didn't know what Hogan's Heroes was. Oh well.

He's a lot of fun, and super sweet. He doesn't like being out of sight of the family, though. He has to have all of us in any given room or he whines and goes looking for the absentees. He camps out on top of the air vents, and wants back inside when it's hot outside. But, he is a giant furball, so you can hardly blame him, there. 

So far he hasn't messed with the lizard enclosure, but Skittles keeps his eye on him just in case. I don't know what he thinks he would do, but he sure does eyeball him and puff out his beard when he comes into the room.

I know this post is a bit scattered, but I just have to share something; Have you ever had Rocky Road Brownies?  I never had before, and I don't care for most Rocky Road ice creams, which is probably why I never paid any attention. I do like marshmallow creme though, so a hot fudge sundae with marshmallow creme does sound good. 

Anyhoo, lately my boys have been on a smores kick. We make them in a 350 degree oven with chocolate chips, and a marshmallow on top of one half of the graham cracker. After 5 minutes, we take them out of the oven and put the other half of the graham cracker on top & voila! Smores!  

Well, I still had chocolate chips and marshmallows, but was out of graham crackers. But I did have a brownie mix up in my cupboard, so I made the brownies and when they were 5 minutes from being done, I put some chocolate chips on top and I cut up some of the marshmallows and put them on top of that and put them back into the oven for the remaining 5 minutes. Oh my goodness! They were yummie!  Kinda messy, but still yummie  :) 

In fact, I'm thinking I need to do that again real soon, only get some mini marshmallows. Yeah, that would work better...