My old friend insomnia has shown up....not that it ever really goes away, but it has been particularly troublesome this week. Usually I just have to to some relaxation exercises for the 4 times a night I wake up, but tonight, at Midnight, my eyes popped open. And have remained so ever since. So, it is now 0303 and my alarm goes off in an hour and a half. I could work out now, but run the risk of waking up the child sized Popsicle that snuck into my bed an hour ago. I think he's like me and takes off his pajamas in the middle of the night. Well, I used to. I keep them on these days. It's too late to take anything to put me back to sleep because I'd be hung over at work; I cleaned the house yesterday, so I can't tidy up (except for the office, the bane of my existence and there is no way in hell I'm starting on that now.), so here I sit with a glass of warm milk, hoping that the triptophan will kick in in order for me to get just ONE MORE HOUR FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!

In other news, I pruned Satan's own roses yesterday and I now look like I have a particularly virulent case of the measles..on my hands. My arms are a mess and I even have scratches on my legs. I wasn't wearing shorts; these roses are of the devil! Porcupines wish they had this defense system. If you come anywhere near these suckers the thorns practically jump off and burrow under your skin. They are gorgeous in bloom, however, smell great and work as a fine deterrent for unwanted neighbors. They also work as a deterrent to pruning as this is the first time I've done it in 5 years and it may be another 5 before I attempt it again.

I'm going to go see if the the triptophan is working and coddle my poor battered hands.

Why you may not want me around your kids

Two of these children got introduced to Metallica today. Two are well-versed. And all have perfected their "rocker faces." The resolution is bad, but what can you expect? It was taken with my Blackberry as I drove down the road.

I picked up my dress from the cleaners tonight and put it back in its dress coffin. So once again it looks like I have a bride's headless torso in a box on my closet shelf.

I woke up this morning to something evil falling from the sky. It was pretty humorous as snow was falling and I had robins on the ground looking for some breakfast.



I was pretty sure that the day was going to turn out okay because at 7 am it looked like this:


However, by 9 it was more like this:

And 11 am saw the beginning of my own personal hell:




I had planned on working in the yard. Cutting back old growth, weeding the flower beds and generally getting ready for the coming spring as my great grandmother's lilac was already getting ready to bud. It's difficult to follow through with those plans when you can't see the yard. Has Mother Nature no respect for the sanctity of my GG's lilac bush? I ask you!

Being thwarted in my effort to work in the yard, I supposed I would have to tackle the office, which looks eerily similar to WWII London after an air raid. This is something I have been putting off for quite some time. And managed to put off for a little longer. Which is sad really, as I couldn't go anywhere until my food order was delivered. It was supposed to come at 9, but didn't get here until one thirty this afternoon. And without my knives! But that is another story. So, I accomplished very little today. I worked out, showered, got dressed, and watched World Cup skiing. That's about it. In my defense the rapid change in weather caused the arthritis in my left ankle to flare up. I resembled a hunchback with a shortened leg the way I was limping around the house. The pain was such that I was rifling through my cabinet for ibuprofen like a recovering heroin addict late for her methadone. 800 mg of ibuprofen later and the pain was unabated. Oh, sweet Percocet, come to me with your siren song! My ankle feels better and I am now in a pleasant haze. I question the wisdom of frying chicken over a gas stove when I'm stoned, but as the children are fed and the house is still standing, I think it's a moot point. I can't figure out if the 17 years of sobriety has made me more susceptible to the effects of narcotics or if I metabolize them slower as I get older. Strange. Perhaps there's a dissertation in there somewhere. Not mine, of course. That would require more effort than I'm capable of at this point.

Here's a little known fact: I love Peeps. It's true. Those sugar infested, marshmallowy concoctions from hell, those diabetic nightmares are my crack. I pant in anticipation for each holiday and the Peeps permutations that come with them. Even the bastardized versions of vanilla cream and strawberry cream Peeps that show up at Valentine's day...heaven in a box. But, soon, soon my precious, Easter and the original, the one true Peeps will be back in the stores and I will achieve a near orgasmic state.

Yep. Need more Percocet.

Where the hell is FEMA when you need it?

FB comes down the stairs after his shower tonight and informs me that the toilet in the boys' bathroom is clogged. FB sounds as if there is a dire emergency whenever he speaks of clogged toilets or faucets that he has difficulty turning off. I can only imagine this stems from when he was four and he had plugged the sink, locked the bathroom door, and turned the sink on full blast. The sink filled to capacity, and then, naturally, past capacity. He was unable to turn the faucet off and was equally unable to unlock the door in his panicked state. I had no knowledge of this catastrophe until the water began pouring through the light fixture in the ceiling fan downstairs. Hence, the panic. I trudged up the stairs to see what fresh hell awaited me. I have plunged more toilets in the 6 years we have lived in this house than I have in my entire life. SoS has a morbid fear of anything getting on his hands...dirt, barbeque sauce, candy...so you can imagine the amount of toilet paper he uses in an effort to keep things tidy. I took the handy dandy plunger upstairs and....great day in the morning!!!!! The toilet was to the brim! The floor was awash! The bathmat was saturated! I wish I still drank! The destruction in that bathroom rivaled flatlands flooding in the Mississippi Delta. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I've had a busy weekend and SoS was living up to his name today, not to mention I took SHSo'C to the airport so he could go to Thailand (read: extremely far away from yours truly. Insert appropriate puppy whimpering noise here); I was a trifle overwhelmed at that point. It didn't help that every time I plunged, a tsunami of toilet water washed over my feet. eeewww. After 6 beach towels, bailing out the toilet bowl and pouring it into the bathtub, 30 minutes of vigorous plunging, and a fair amount of dropping the f-bomb, I achieved toilet pipe patency! The bitch of this whole thing is I had just mopped the floors and cleaned the bathrooms three days ago. As I gathered up the sopping, dripping, disgusting bathmat and towels and carried them dripping and sopping down the stairs to the laundry room I had to ask myself...why do I even bother? This helps my anal tendencies not at all.

Howzabout these apples?

See Anne




See Jay






Meet Mr. and Mrs. Hardy




BOOYAH!

The Wilderness and Body Shots

I ran in the woods again on Wednesday. Yeah, still hate it. I decided to explore a little more and avoid the steep incline on the previous running trail. Luckily, the trail takes you farther from the "girl's finishing school" and debutantes that will be unleashed to society in a short 2-6 years. I checked the maps on the sign posts as I went, making sure I kept to the marked and maintained trail. Now, as this is winter, I realized the trail might not be in the greatest shape, and I did notice that a few places as I went along needed repair. Log bridges with broken logs, traction areas that needed to be replaced, that sort of thing. I'd been out about an hour, coming around the back side of the trail when I noticed the trail getting fainter. "Hmm, the park system must not have been out here for awhile." Soon, I was fighting my way through Scotch Broom that towered four feet over my head. As it is not my habit to carry a machete when I'm out, this made forward progress a trifle difficult. Not to mention slow, as I had to stop and untangle the dog's leash from the Scotch Broom stems that resembled saplings. But I persevered! Even as the thought that perhaps I was off trail wormed it's way into my frontal lobe, I pushed on. Past the car parts, mattresses, and rusty bedprings (weird. the other parts of the park are so well maintained. oh well), past the power lines (this seems less wooded than the rest of the park) until I reached a construction site with an erosion barrier. Gee, Dorothy, I don't think we're in Kansas any more. I blame oxygen deprivation. I then had to fight my way back through the maze of opportunistic, non native weeds to the trail. Oh, look, the trail marker I must have blazed right past! Back on track, I continued as the trail got steeper and more narrow. Before long, it resembled the donkey track into the belly of the Grand Canyon. Good choice. I am obviously not running by this time, however, I am getting a hell of a lower body workout. Buns and thighs! The dog, meanwhile, is lagging as far as his leash will reach behind me. Apparently, he feared for his life walking beside me on the trail.

After I had recovered from my adventure, I ventured to the mall for a Very Important Errand. Anyone who knows me knows that it must be a Very Important Errand for me to voluntarily enter the mall; the place where my psych instructor in nursing school insisted was the font of all the mental illness in the county. And rightly so, I believe. The fact that I wasn't at knife point stuns me still. Anyhoo....this mall has an American Eagle, a Hollister, and an Ambercrombie and Fitch store. Why they need three meccas of douchebaggery I do not know. But the question I have is do they send Axe or Tag body shots through the ventilation system? Just walking by these stores you are hit with a wave of the most nauseating miasma of funk known to man. I think I tasted the stores for about 20 feet after I passed them. You can't smoke inside buildings in this county, but you can sure as hell fumigate with douche perfume. I'm just sayin'.

I ran today for the first time since last February. It was an avalanche of icy roads, not feeling well, and surgery combined with my inherent laziness that laid low my lofty ideals. Today, however, feeling guilty about the dog having been locked up in the house or the backyard with no one to play with for the last three days, I decided I would go running after taking the boys to the bus stop. There is a wooded park with many trails just down the road from the bus stop and I thought it would be a grand idea to walk over there, run, and walk back. It would be refreshing! It would be glorious! It would tire the dog out so I could do some housework without dodging him and his need to be glued to my side at all times! Ever try to mop with a dog who feels the need to stay four inches in front of you? Ever try to even walk down the stairs with such a dog? Good times. But, I digress. The boys took such a long time getting ready to go, mainly due to a Gameboy addiction, that by the time we got down to the bus stop, the bus was well on it's way to picking up other children. There happens to be another stop on the far side of our neighborhood, so we booked back home, shoved everyone in the car and drove to the other side. We beat the bus by about 90 seconds. Missed needing to drive to the school by that much....woohoo!

The dog and I made our way to the nearby park where there is an abundance of foliage and not much fauna of the two legged variety. The park is 122 acres of foresty goodness with 3 miles of hiking/biking/walking/horsing trails. I strapped on (quiet!) my iPod on, took a firm grip on Knucklehead McSpazatron and off we went. Now, lest you have forgotten, I hate running. After of year of non-running, I still hate it. I had gotten to where I just disliked it intensely, but I have come to the conclusion that I officially hate it. Unfortunately, my dog is in dire need of lots of activity, so once again, I'm running. It's actually a pleasant place to run until you see the sign that reads, "Keep dogs on leash at all time. Recent Bear Sighting." Are you kidding me? Do you really think I want to keep the bait that close to me? I spent a great deal of the run eyeing the hollowed out spots in the underbrush where some form of animal had bedded down for the night. Or a homeless person. There, now I feel better. Although, with the park being in close proximity to the prison, I guess it could have been an escaped convict. Which lead me to thoughts of being an extra in the Roger Corman extravaganza Swamp Diamonds starring Mike "Mannix" Connors. For some reason in this film he was known as "Touch" Connors. I can only hope this was a drug induced suggestion from his agent and not some ego driven need for a cool handle.



(That is one masculine looking woman. And what's with the popped collar?) Really bad movies made great by the vocal stylings of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Oh, how I miss them. Sorry. Moving on....

Fears of being abducted by a gang of bleach blonde, perfectly coiffed, escaped convicts aside, the run went fairly well until the trail took a turn for the worse. The trail ran alongside a drop off to the highway. Looking at this stretch of highway, I realized that I was staring at the back of a large sign. Really large sign. The only really large signs on this stretch of highway are the ones that read "Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers. Correctional Facility." Oop! Time to beat cheeks outta there. Little closer to my clientele than I wanted to be. I took a left and found yet another challenge. Read: steep incline. Something my with which my mobility restricted left ankle would not be amused. My choice here would be to continue running, albeit on tippy toes as far as my left side goes, or to reduce my pace to a brisk walk. Shoot. Dang, I really wanted to continue running, but my physical restrictions just would not allow it. Okay, I'm a big baby and I was ready to stop for awhile. Not to mention the fact that the cold air caused me to spend the next 4 hours coughing like I'm sure this chick does


Yaaaaaah! You know she hacks up a lung every day.

Life