The Last Day of 2012

2012 has been a year of ups and downs.  Goods and bads. 

Goods

1. My daughter moved close to me.
2. My kitchen renovations were finally completed. 
3. I was asked to write for an on-line magazine.
4. We got our wood done early. 
5. I got to see my entire family...all in one place. 
6. I didn't chop anything off, break anything, or saw any body part in two, my body finishes the year in one piece.
7. The hubby and I are still talking, not divorced, and actually seem to still like each other.  
8. My dog seems to have learned to stay away from porcupines after a minor encounter.
9. My beach is coming along quite nicely. 
10. The weather was amazing this year. 
11. I've learned to like my cat.
12. The world did not end in rapture or Mayan disaster. 
13. I continue to enjoy writing in my blog. 

Bads

1. My mom died.
2. We ran out of money so could not complete our house renovations.
3. I managed to gain twenty pounds from stress eating. 
4. My cholesterol is high.
5. I've learned to like my cat.
6. I need new runners. 
7. I need to start running again. 
8. We got snow on the ground.

Tonight I will be celebrating the coming year as I've done many times in the past...eating dinner, reading a book, watching a movie, and going to bed whenever I am tired.  I may potentially stay up until midnight but if I were a betting woman I wouldn't take that bet. 

Our fantastic weather has finally turned to craptastic in the last couple of days.  We went from no snow to some snow, which means I can no longer see the green on my front grass.  Which sucks, but it is winter and being in Canada that means taking the bad with the good.  The temperature actually dropped today and has been hovering in the -5 degree range, but with a serious wind I am sure it feels so much colder (no I haven't taken the dog for a walk yet so I cannot be 100% positive about it...but I would take that bet.) Here is the newest submission to Life As A Human if anyone is interested in reading it.  http://lifeasahuman.com/2012/relationships/family/i-love-you-heart-and-soul/

Well it has been a pleasure regaling everyone with the antics that is Kitpu Estates, and I hope to continue the process into the next year, and the year after, and the year after....etc. 

So Happy New Year from all of us here at Kitpu Estates; Sunny McJingles, the Hellhound, Karson the cat, and me, Iron Bess of the East.   

Happy Turkey Day Y'All

We finally had our turkey day today and I am still stuffed.  Almost as stuffed as the turkey was but not quite in the same areas...yet.  I bought one of them turkey's which look like they came out second best in the fight, this one was missing a wing, which means quite a discount on the price.  It was amazingly tender and fallie apart after the cooking of it, so in my books it was quite worth the fact that it was missing an appendage.  But it was cook all day, eat in five minutes, feel full and kind of sick to the stomach for hours after, so pretty much par for the course. 

We were going to spend the night at the kidlet's place but Sunny McJingles and I decided to come back to Kitpu Estates so we can batten down the hatches and wait for the big storm that has been forecast to blow in tonight.  You see a few years back I had come out east to visit my mom after her surgery and on the day I was leaving they predicted a big storm which I got caught in.  The day before the storm it was warm, sunny, and blue skies and as I was driving into the city so I would have a head start over the weather I was questioning my sanity.  Good thing I did because it was beyond crazy!  It went from green grass to two feet of snow, and six feet of snow banks in less than two hours.  Which brings me to now...we won't be taking chances of getting caught away from home.  Someone needs to a) plow/blow/shovel the walk/driveways, b) make sure the fire is stoked, and c) make sure the cat gets fed.  (I think the cat may switch those priorities if she knew.) 

WTQ?

So there we go, another December 25th has come and gone, and life, the economy, and the world continues on.  Or does it?   

I woke up this morning to a green lawn, but then it started snowing, blowing, and winding like it hasn't done since some time two years ago.  Yuck.  The weather wizards on CBC radio were chattering all day that it was going to be turning to rain later this afternoon, and it did...in spades.  Which is really, really crappy.  The reason I say that is because instead of curling up with a good book beside a fire tonight and never stepping foot outside the house the kidlet's hubby is flying in today from somewhere in the Denver area and has to fly to Toronto, then to Halifax, and they are talking about delays and cancellations.  Sunny McJingles, aka The Hubby, has volunteered to go and pick him up so the kidlet doesn't have to take her young ones out into this.  I suggested that if the flight actually does make it in he should probably just hotel it overnight and then hubby can pick him up during daylight hours.  But what do I know right?

It really is quick shitty out there.  I am really not that thrilled about hubby driving in this when it isn't absolutely necessary.  Okay I will quit loading this blog down in worry now and write about something else. 

We haven't actually done the whole Xmas thing yet seeing as we are missing one adult in the mix, so our dinner and gift opening will take place in two days.  The weird thing about it all is that even though we haven't actually done typical celebrations yet I already feel like I am done with the whole process.  It's one of those things that seems like a good idea at the time but really when it comes down to it I don't actually want to do it.  Oh, oh...I wonder if that is my mother speaking through me?  She was always like that. 

Me: "Mom I'm going to Lethbridge next weekend want to come?" 

 

Mom: "Oh that sounds lovely.  I would love to come."

Flash forward a week....

 

Me: "I'm just leaving now I'll be by to pick you up in five minutes."

Mom: "Oh dear I'm not going to go, I'm not feeling very well."

Me: "I just talked to you last night you were feeling fine."

Mom: "I...um...suddenly fell ill last night.  After talking to you I was up all night throwing up...and I developed cataracts...and I have Lyme disease...and Lupus...and I also fell down and broke my leg/arm/tooth/spine/small intestine...and forgot to wash my hair. So I can't go.  But I have a list for you to pick up for me it's only four pages long..."

And sadly that isn't an exaggeration. 

The kidlet and her brood spent the last three days with us so of course I am exhausted.  Here is a bit of advice for those people considering putting off having kids until they are in their forties.  DON’T!  Unless you have enough money to hire a nanny, au pair, cook, maid, butler, chauffeur, shrink and massage therapist.  (If you have that much money you may also want to consider someone else having the kids for you.  Oh and also building an entire structure next to your home to house all the toys, paraphernalia, gym, padded rooms, TV room, five ring circus, and miniature version of Disney Land you will need to keep them entertained.)  Otherwise I cannot vouch for your sanity nor chances of surviving into your fifties. 

And while I am on the topic of keeping tiny humans entertained I want to know when exactly did that kind of crap start?  I certainly do not remember having to entertain my kid (of course truth be told I don’t remember a bunch of stuff from that far back, I was too busy still being a kid myself.) And I know for a fact that my parents would have looked at me like I had just grown three heads if I had ever wandered over and wanted them to entertain me.  With five kids and no dryer my mom didn’t have enough time to keep up with the laundry let alone entertain any of us.  I would have gotten lucky to get off with a small bop up side the head. 

Also now that those small human types have begun to speak and understand speech I have discovered that I have a bit more of a potty mouth than I thought.  I mean I’ve never been adverse to dropping the occasional “F” bomb, but now when I have it repeated to me by a tiny little person it isn’t all that cool.  So the kidlet has decided that instead of saying, “Oh for fuck’s sake.”  It will be a lot better for us to say, “Oh for quack sakes.”  Or, “What the quack? “  So from now on it will be WTQ? 

Anyway I had better go and wrap some presents for the upcoming festivities.  I should but I think I’m not feeling very well I think I might be coming down with Dutch Elm disease so I may not be able to go. 

 

 

Christmas Eve 2012

When I was a kid Christmas Eve was the pretty much "The Best Day of the Year" it even outshone Halloween in my books.  My parents were first generation immigrants from the old country so consequently they celebrated Christmas the way they did back home.  That meant no Santa Claus, but the good old Christmas Angel that came on Christmas Eve.  All of us kids were carted off to the grandparents house for the day and when we returned our house had gone through a miraculous transformation.  A tree stood lit up and decorated in the corner, presents burgeoned under it, the smell of roast turkey and home made bread wafted through the house.  It verged on a religious experience for us. 

After the first initial excitement of coming home to "Christmas Land" we all stood in front of the tree with our arms around each other and sang, Mennyből az angyal, which means an angel from heaven.  Then the song goes on about the usual manger, shepherds, the baby Jesus, and other typical Christmas-y type references.  I think I knew the first verse then after that I just did "fake it, fake it, fake it," most of it was over my head, plus by that point I was getting a little impatient about the whole opening the presents scenario.  Because you see in our house after the singing, came the hugging, and the kissing each other, then the diving into the presents and opening all of them right there and then.  Then after spending a good five or six minutes with our loot we were hauled away to feast on bird, stuffing, and all the other fixings.  Yummy.  And usually it didn't take much convincing as the grandparents didn't feed us too much all day so we were rather like the ravenous bug bladder beasts of Trall.   

Of course the whole irony of the song was completely lost on me as a kid as we were not exactly what you would call a religious family.  In fact we were more of the exact opposite to the nth degree.  I'm pretty sure if my parents hadn't have been so wrapped up in "the tradition" they may have considered changing the song to something a lot more worthy like, Imagine, or All You Need Is Love, or if it were up to my dad, How Much is That Doggy in the Window, he was a huge Doris Day fan.  Or if it was up to my mom it might have been Cow, Cow Baby by the Diamonds.  (Later on I discovered that the song is actually called Cool, Cool Baby.  English wasn't her first language.) 

Anyway what brought on this whole reminiscing thing about Christmases past was the fact that me and Sunny McJingles (hubby's elf name) took the kid, and the poop brigade, out to the back forty and cut us down a Christmas tree this afternoon, then brought it in and decorated it.  When I posted that bit of information on Facebook I had a few people comment that I shouldn't even bother with a tree this year.  Pa-shaw I say to that. Trees are supposed to go up on Christmas Eve and come down on New Year's day.  Tradition!  Tradition! 

The kid was a tad bit disappointed that tree getting was relatively quick and painless this year, she distinctly remembers going out with the Hubby and having to wade through chest deep snow, or jump from long foot step, to long foot step, trying to keep up to her dad's meters long steps (he is six foot two) and wander ten kilometers in minus 30 degrees uphill (both ways) to get the tree.  This year...no snow...five minute quad ride...tree 25 meters off the trail...sawed down in seconds...five minute quad ride home.  Done and done.  Oh the humanity!  Although I'm not sure exactly what she is whinging about because she has been cackling gleefully every time she gets another report of the three meter high snowbanks, and minus forty temperatures, in the town she has just moved away from.  Me thinks that deep down inside she is truly missing the snow and the cold, even though she is adamant that she is not. 

Although technically it is Christmas Eve tonight we won't be doing the actual Christmas thing today, or tomorrow, as we are waiting for Blinky Candy-Lips (the kidlet's hubby...his elf name) to fly home from work sometime before the end of the year.  My elf name is Peppy Sugar-Socks for those who care to know.  Although I feel more like Sugar Peppy-Socks...or Socky McBunnykins.  Either way I am all mellowed out, and pepped up, from the Bailey's and coffee I have been imbibing in tonight. 

Here is the shortest and youngest member of the poop brigade checking out the tree situation in the back forty. 

The Hobbit of the Ring

The jury is still out on The Hobbit, so I guess that means, in my world anyway, that I am pretty much "meh" with it.  I was pretty okay with the way that Jackson tried to tied in the LOTR with it at the beginning, having Bilbo and Frodo have a little discussion then whoosh, flashback.  It certainly didn't make me want to start screaming and tear my hair out.  He did a kick ass job with the Unexpected Party, although I thought that the original details about Bilbo's feelings were a lot better than the new and improved Jackson ones.  The trolls were done pretty well, but again, I thought that the original method of keeping the trolls talking until the sunrise would have worked better. Radagast was good, he did get a couple of tiny mentions in the books. Rivendell was okay, I didn't even mind pulling Sauruman and Galadriel in for a conference, as the kid pointed out the non-reading audience members kind of needed some back fill of information.  I was okay with Riddles in the Dark, because really, who would have wanted to watch that entire transaction take place in pitch black...that wouldn't have been good movie fun. 

Things that picked my ass a bit though, and were wayyyyy over the top, were the stone giants, the fall into the goblin's basket from the front gate, the gratuitous killing of a billion goblins as they were trying to escape, the fall down the mile long shaft, and that new fucking character, Azog, on the big white warg. WTF is with that?  There is no need to add shit like this...it adds zero to an already excellent story line.  Jackson could have spent more time introducing all of the dwarves, and perhaps doing a bit of a back story on them if he wanted to fill in the time. 

I'm also a little bit unimpressed with the way he was trying to give it that "children's story feel" but also make it another version of the LOTR, all it seemed to do was make the kiddie lines seem really cheesy.  So the Old Shoes and Tea Society rating team has given The Hobbit six shoes laces out of ten. 

Hubby also would like to point out that the eagles should have taken everyone straight to the Lonely Mountain and saved everyone a whole whack of time just as they should have flown Frodo and Sam straight to Mount Doom.  So I guess he is speaking for the non-Hobbit-reading public. I told him that in the book the eagles are kind of crabby-assed and are not all that fond of dragging dwarf, hobbit, wizard, man, or elf arses around and they told them that in no uncertain terms.  Perhaps a detail that Mr. Jackson could have mentioned. 

Impatiently Waiting

I’m very excited, very excited because tomorrow is the day I get to go and watch the Hobbit. Now for anyone who knows me I am a proud geek, I am a girl geek who loves the Hobbit, who loves the Lord of the Rings, who loves science-fiction and fantasy novels.  I’m not sure if it’s cool now days I know it certainly wasn’t cool when I was growing up. Maybe there are a lot more girls that are geeks now days I’m not sure, but I sure hope so. I’ve heard both good things and bad things about The Hobbit, but as usual I will have to make up my own mind. My hope is that Mr. Jackson didn’t go too overboard with trying to make it exactly the same LOTR. You see the difference between the Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit, is that The Hobbit was written as a children’s book whereas the Lord of the rings is more of an adult book. So the concern is that he is going to try to make The Hobbit less like the book and more like what he thinks that an audience is going to want to see based on his previous work. But I guess I have to wait a day and see. 

In the meantime today is a pretty crappy day out there. It was blowing and raining all night long. But this morning it started snowing and it’s been pretty much snowing off and on all day long. The temperature is sitting at around zero so the snow doesn’t know if it wants to be snow or if it wants to be rain. The wind is blowing and the snow/rain/sleet is falling horizontally, which is not great when you’re considering going for a walk. But seeing as I have one of those four-legged mammals that needs to go out I guess I am going to have to pull out my rubber boots, dress myself up in something waterproof and head out to the back forty. Wish me luck.

Life As A Writer Who Is Human

Exciting news for old Iron Bess today, I've been asked to become a regular writer for a really cool site about the human experience, it is called Life As A Human.  Here is a link to my very first article for the site - http://lifeasahuman.com/2012/relationships/family/dads-are-supposed-to-know-what-they-are-doing-right/  It is a story, or more like a character study of my father.  If you read it you will know where I get a lot of my crazy from. 

Speaking of crazy...today's weather report is all about crazy, blowing wind, blowing water, and raining canines and felines out there today.  I spent the morning taking the shortest, and poopiest of the Poop Brigade to gymnastics this morning, so mother and daughter could go and enjoy the least poopiest in her very first Xmas concert.  The cuteness quotient was wayyyyyyy up there.  I've only seen a couple of seconds of the video clip, and as all performances of three and four year old children are, it was seriously an awwwwwwww moment. 

Meanwhile a bit across town I spent a couple of hours with the youngest, having an hour to kill and not wanting him to be stuck strapped in a car seat and watching a mind numbingly boring children's show on the DVD player I opted to take him to the mall.  Good call on my part!  Almost every single store was still closed up so I allowed, His Shortness, free rein to run up and down the hallways, climb on cars, trains, helicopters, motorcycles, and horses placed strategically around the mall to attract small children types and to separate the money from the wallets of parents and other guardians.  I opted not to put a loonie in the slots (good thing otherwise I would have had to immediately start a full time job to subsidize the outing) but he seemed to enjoy it nonetheless.  Then we went to gymnastics where there were only two other tiny humans who showed up.  After charging around for a full ten minutes and falling approximately four thousand times His Shortness was ready for some serious instructions from the coach.

Coaching consisted of approximately three nanoseconds of attempting to get the wee ones to do something.   That was not happening, not at least without direct intervention from the guardians.  I managed to get my creature to crawl through a tunnel, crawl under a balance beam, and then pretend to hang on two rings which were held up by a piece of rope each.  High tech this place is not.  Then he got bored and spent most of the rest of the time trying to get to the only two places in the entire room where, a) he was not supposed to go, and b) where he could potentially hurt himself because they weren't covered in six inches of foam.  The other parental units spent most of their time lounging on thick pieces of foam and yelling instructions at their small humans who ignored them completely.

Fun times.   

Stack and Pile

A two day visit from the daughter and her Poop Brigade ended this morning.  Both the hubby and I were mentally exhausted by the time the munchkins left, yet again a reason to have children when you are very young because the older one gets the more it takes out of a person.  Crazy is the lady who waits until her forties to pop out a poop machine, or two.  Crazy and exhausted. The hubby kept saying that he did not know how the kidlet managed the wee ones on her own while her hubby is off working in the hinterlands of the USofA.   

In order to work off the mental exhaustion of watching two small humans whose only goal in life seems to be “how can I injure myself as quickly as possible, and what can I do to make sure I annoy everyone as much as possible before I do that”, we went out to the wood pile to split us some lumber.  The wood pile has grown a bit over the past week because we have been working on widening our new road on the swamp side of the back forty. Because of that activity we have poplar, oak, maple, pine, and some other unidentified trees in the mix.  Some are big assed logs, while others are more like poles, either way it has made our wood pile grow exponentially.  And happily we now have a pretty split, and stacked row awaiting the winds and sun to do their job and dry them out over the coming months.   

Last year while working on a different section of the road we also managed to cut a plethora of trees, but instead of bringing them out to the woodlot we had stacked and piled them beside the road and let them rest there until the spring, the process worked, but this year we are already ahead of the game by having them where they need to be in order to take the most advantage of wind and sun.  (Whew, that was a long sentence.)  If the weather continues to hold my hope is that we will manage to get another entire row split, and stacked, before the end of the week.  That would be happy days!  Last year we lucked out because we didn’t get a bunch of snow so consequently we were able to take advantage of the thick ice on the swamp and cull a few hardwood trees from there.  If the same situation happens this year we may actually get ALL of our wood for next year split, stacked, and piled.  How amazingly brilliant would that be?  Now if I could just win that lottery before next fall I could hire someone to haul it into the basement for me.  I hate, loathe, despise, abhor, detest, and abominate that part.  And I don’t like it very much either. 

Tarred

Yep I'm tarred this afternoon, in fact so tired that I am feeling all sleepy like.  I'm not exactly sure what is up with me these days but my body is making me wake up between five and six every morning.  How annoying is that?  One of the reason's I took early retirement was because I was sick of getting up at 4:30am every day.  Of course my situation today is slightly different, I definitely don't have to drive through mountain passes dodging deer, elk, and sheep every day. All I have to do is get up shuffle slowly into the living room and build myself a small fire, then wander into the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil for tea. Oh and I also don't have to spend 12 hours at work sitting behind my desk working on things that I'd rather not work on. I can just spend hours if I want to wasting time playing on my iPad.

Of course, it's not just getting up early today that is making me tired, me and my trusty little chainsaw were out cutting up soon pretty substantial trees this afternoon. Some of the trees were so big that my chainsaw bar wouldn't go all the way through, so sometimes it felt like I was actually using the chainsaw like it was an actual handsaw, just hacking back-and-forth trying to get through the wood.

Not sure which part of my body is worse or more sore as as the case may be.  . My arms are feeling all shaky like, my butt is feeling all pulled-like, and my back is just not feeling great in fact it feels like I should be getting a massage just for being brave enough to tackle a ginormous tree. But I don't think there is anybody kicking around giving away free massages for this chickie-poo.

Well I'm off to grab something to eat then maybe laze around and play with my iPad, and then possibly watch a movie before going to la-la land.  Oh and just as a note, voice to text straight onto this blog site is craptastic.  It works a hell of a lot better straight onto Word then copy and paste onto this site. 

Practicing With Speech Recognition

I received my speech to text program in the mail today this is the one that I paid for. I have to admit it’s 100 times better than the free app I downloaded on my iPad. So I’m sitting here trying it out and feeling very self-conscious. It is definitely weird talking at the computer screen instead of typing. I’m conditioned to watch the words appear on the screen while my fingers are actually the ones doing the talking not my mouth. It’s really difficult to think this way. It is definitely going to be one of those things that I’m going to have to get used to.

 

It’s funny I thought I was pretty articulate, but this program has shown me that I’m a lazy speaker. Another thing this has shown me is that when I speak and I reread what is down on the page then I don’t see the mistakes. It is definitely something that is going to take a bit to get used to.

 

Anyway I guess this is enough for tonight. I will work on my, speech to text, writing skills a little bit more tomorrow morning. Good night all.

Porn Be Gone!

I have a question for all those people out there who are creating porn sites, don't you have enough money already?  Aren't there zillions of people already paying you so they can sit in front of their computers and breathe heavily while fantasizing about things which will never happen to them?  Can't you leave the rest of us alone?  Tonight I logged onto one of the blogs that I read all the time and read the first sentence when suddenly I was looking at a really skanky porn site.  My first thought was WTF just happened?  I thought for a second that I had somehow inadvertently hit the wrong key and ended up somewhere that I really did not want to be.  Then I remembered my daughter telling me that her husband had sent a link of her blog to his mother and when she clicked on it she was directed to a really skanky porn site.  And although that is sort of funny it also starts to indicate a pattern to me.  Someone must be spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to connect people to these sites when they have no intention of going there.  I know that, that kind of technology costs money, which brings me back to my original question....don't you people have enough money?  Why spend more money trying to entice more customers, don't you have enough already? 

Does this mean that now not only do I have to get anti-virus protection on my computer, but I also have to get anti-pornography protection as well?   Sigh.....arrrrgggghhhhh.....grrrrrrrrrrrr! 

Merry Freakin Xmas Cookies

Holy Toledo!  I spent over six hours yesterday doing Xmas baking with the kid and feel as if someone beat me with a bag of oranges...frozen oranges.  Standing and mixing, rolling, cutting, and baking for that many hours is hard on the legs.  Thankfully I was wearing a pair of my daughter's Crocs otherwise I wouldn't have been able to stand up today at all. 

This morning we went at it again so now we have butter tarts, pumpkin tarts, sugar cookies, shortbread cookies, ginger cookies, and piggies in blankets all bagged and in the freezer.  It is nice to have company while doing this work; last year when I was being all Dora Domestica I only had the radio as company and consequently ended up massively depressed from listening to all the bad things the news always had to report all day long.  This time around we listened to Xmas carols and chatted about books, grandma, religion, politics, the weather, old friends, new friends, kids, school, more books, and more books.  We also spent a lot of time doing the following - 

Me: Get your butt back upstairs!  Go play with your toys. 

Kid: If I have to come up there someone is going to get a spanking!  Mom what else should I add to this?

Me: Can you pour a teaspoon of milk in this mix?  Leave your brother alone!  Do you want grandma to give you a spanking? 

Kid: Get out of this kitchen right now, and take your brother with you.  Go play with your toys or I'm putting you to bed.  Can you get the oven door for me mom?

Me: That consistency looks perfect, just stir it a bit more.  Scooter do NOT touch that it's hot!  Out! 

Ah the joyfulness of the holiday season. 

Beavers R Us

I seriously cannot believe how much my body is seizing up from the tiny bit of chainsawing that the hubby and I did today.  I could understand it if I was the hubby, seeing as his chainsaw only weighs about three times as much as mine.  I would have to start weight lifting for five weeks before I could just pick his up and hold it out for five seconds, let alone having to use it.  Mine is teeny, tiny and it still weighs a few more pounds then I like. 

Sigh.....sigh....I can't believe how out of shape I am.  What happened to the girl who could go for a ten k run then spend an hour at the gym without having to have a nap afterwards?  Oh well, I guess that regiment of lying around playing on my iPad isn't helping me with my fitness level.  So it is back to the old work out routine for me unless I want to get used to feeling, and looking, like Jabba the Hut. 

Walking Company

It was a cold winter's day this morning on my walk to the back forty, the wind was blowing and tiny flakes were dancing between creaking boughs, and rustling grass. I decided to spend the majority of time under the cover of the trees because the wind wasn't making it pleasant to be out in the open, so I strolled around, through, back, forth, up and down on my property.  Leaves crunched under my feet filling the air with that tangy, slightly moldy smell which I associate with autumn.  Me and the dog managed to scare up four partridge which had been hanging out together in a small scrub.  Happily I didn't have my usual heart attack when they leapt into the air right beside me, perhaps I am starting to get inured to the jumpy beasties. 

My walk was chilly and pleasant, and to be honest a tad bit odd, the whole time I was wandering around following all the trails and roads it almost felt as if my mom was there.  Which is extremely strange for several reasons, to begin with she just passed away in August, so it is highly unlikely that she would be skulking around in the trees, especially because she has been cremated.  And second, even if one would buy into the whole spirits hanging around thing, I know for a fact that my mom has never been in the back forty.  She always talked about wanting to come back and see it because of the way I would wax poetic about my land, but she never got around to it.  And third, she was a teeny, tiny little thing and even had she been in the best of health wouldn't have ever been able to keep up with my somewhat large, moose-like strides.  Plus she is still sitting in my closet in a small box waiting for the day I set her free floating over a mountain in the Rockies. 

But nevertheless she was very much on my mind during my walk this morning.  And if she is hanging out and haunting me for once she did not tell me to remember my hat, change my pants, pull up my sock, or brush my hair before heading out the door.  The afterlife must be mellowing her out. 

Wettings

Oh boy, today is a wet, wet day.  Actually I should clarify that, this afternoon is a wet, wet day.  This morning it was just kind of dampish.  I took the hell hound for a walk in the back forty this morning and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It sprinkled a bit off and on but I stayed mostly under the trees and didn't end up a drowned rat.  It's a good thing I did go this morning because it is coming down in buckets now.  So I walked, and walked, and wrote, and wrote.  Well wrote in my head...hmmmm...maybe I should have brought my iPad with me and tried that speech to text app I used for my post yesterday. 

That speech to text app was a pretty funny post though.  I don't know if it was me being a dork as I was talking, or if the app was a bit confused.  I guess I can't complain seeing as it was free.  I'd like to try a real program of speech to text to see if it will work better.  I've done a little bit of research on it and it looks promising.  My biggest concern though is my ability to write by speaking, I'm so used to letting my fingers do the talking for me.  I also found with my few practice runs with the speech to text thing I was feeling slightly self conscious about it. Okay a LOT self conscious about it.  I feel like I am talking to myself, and I am.  Perhaps it would work better if I propped hubby up beside me and talked.  I'm sure he would love that! 

App speech to text

So it's really morning here at Kiku states and I'm sitting here with a nice little fire and waiting for the send. It's a beautiful morning in terms of temperature and in terms of the fact that you don't have snow on ground which I think. And I'm also trying a new app Which changes speech to text and the app is free so it's going to be interesting mother works. 

Hubby is sleeping I just had to feed the cat because she is acting Wright inseam is as it Doublewoods crawling up her butt. I like the dog outside and then another dog inside dog outside and done inside before I decided to stop that game.


Ha ha this is pretty funny it's almost like Likea AutoCorrect after you've typed with not really paying attention to what you're doing. So the stuff that this thing is coming up this is completely crazy. For example

Before about the Doublewoods I don't know where that came. Maybe it's commandments they talking techmedia think I'm saying right things in fact I'm not.

Merry Hollypundia

If anyone has been on Facebook lately, or any other areas of social media, you may have noticed how it is being inundated by these huffy, offended, bad-tempered, over sensitive updates from people who are traumatized about what people are calling the holidays?  At first I was all “meh” about it and ignored them because frankly I don’t give a flying rat’s ass about it.  But lately it just seems like everyone is jumping on the whole say, Merry Christmas not Happy Holidays thing, and getting all hostile about it.   

Which got me wondering if in fact there actually is some kind of movement out there that I was not aware of which is pushing the world away from saying Merry Christmas and trying to make everyone change to the generic greeting Happy Holidays.  I’ve seen these posts a few times in the past few years but this year it just seems to have escalated and it piqued my curiosity, and being who I am I had to do some investigations into it.  My first step was to peruse the news links.  It turned up nada.  Then I checked out Snopes, which reports that this is an urban myth which has been circulating since the 1970’s and the fact is that the whole push to get the government to change the wording by nefarious atheist groups is a total fabrication.  I then checked out some of the more high profile atheist sites who I thought may actually advocate something like this and only turned up a few comments about Christians getting huffy about Christmas greetings.  Then I went to some of the Christian sites and bingo I hit jackpot, on some sites there is a veritable hornet’s nest of commotion about it.  So ultimately what I learned is that the people who are bitching and complaining about it the most, and making a big hairy deal out of it, are actually the ones who are creating the issue in the first place.   

Obviously the ironic aspect of the whole thing is that Christians actually don’t even have dibs on the season to begin with.  Long before Christianity this holiday has been celebrated for centuries by many different cultures and civilizations.  Many pagan cultures celebrated the winter solstice, the Feast of Juul was celebrated in Scandinavia, Saturnalia was celebrated by the Romans, the Wiccans called it Alban Arthan, the Mayan Indians honored the sun god they worshipped with a dangerous ritual known as the flying pole dance.  I could go on, but you get the picture.  So the next time someone gets their panties tied in a knot about the name you can wish them a Merry Hollypundia from the ancient Egyptians with a big helping of warm noodley goodness from the Flying Spaghetti Monster! 

 

Home Again

Well here I am I managed to survive the week, and so did everyone else.  Yipee.  The Poop Brigade has been handed back to the parental units and I am now back at home with hubby and hell hound in tow.  It was a busy, busy week making sure that the munchkins did not a) kill themselves, b) become malnourished, or c) beat each other into bloody pulps (and let's face it, d) did not get sold off to the highest bidder because that could be a very real danger with Iron Bess when she gets annoyed.)  They were cute, adorable, loving, busy, annoying, sticky, loud, poopy and full of energy.  All in all I think it was quite a feat for me to accomplish. 

Which makes me realize that I am very happy not being a full time custodian of little people at this stage of my life.  They just take up wayyyyyy too much of a person's time and energy, even when one is not directly interacting with them.  I am far too fond of having my own space for long periods of time.  And I know this may not be a good thing to admit because it probably goes against some kind of female code of ethics, but I don't think that I am a natural care giver, or liker of little people.  I think I may have missed out on that gene when being built.  My mom was such a huge fan of the little ones that I think she may have gotten a double dosage of it and didn't have any left over to pass it on to me.  She used to get all gushy around them and coo at them and be all maternal and sigh with regret when they went away.  Me not so much. 

I'm still looking for a part time job and I can honestly say that I will be able to scratch Day Care Worker off the list.