Easter....

I hope all of you have a wonderful Easter weekend. We are just hanging out, having dinner and taking it easy so we can rest up for our vacation. And in case you haven't heard, the Easter Bunny has suffered identity theft this year:



Until he can get all of that straightened out, his Easter duties will be taken over by:



The world famous Easter Gorilla, of course. If you want more candy in your basket this year, you might want to try a banana bribe. :)

File this under Delicious

This is what we made tonight! So yummy. Harris Teeter had these beautiful strawberries on sale for buy 1 get 2 free. 2! So we have been eating a lot of strawberries these past couple of days. Mostly shortcake with whipped cream, but beside the strawberries in the produce section was these containers of dipping chocolate. All you do is microwave, dip, and it sets up quickly. I didn't know if it would be a good chocolate or one of those waxy chocolates, but it was excellent. I would so buy it again. And I might......This might be our dessert for Easter dinner. LOL.

A Little Bit Trashy

I ask you....when is it ok to throw trash out of the window of a moving vehicle? I mean seriously. I know that we live on a busy road, but still. It shouldn't matter if its a city street, a suburban neighborhood road, a busy highway, or a country lane. It is NOT ok to throw garbage out of your window. EVER! It really makes me angry because we have a collection of trash show up on our road frontage all the time. I spent part of my afternoon walking the perimeter of our property with a garbage bag, picking up all the trash. Its been so windy lately that a whole lot of it had blown up against the tree line all the way in our backyard. Who does that? Somebody does, thats for sure. I have a full bag of somebody's empty bottles and cans and fastfood bags, and grocery bags....etc.

One afternoon this past week one of the ECU buses passed me going in the opposite direction while I was sitting at a stop light. Some moron threw a drink cup full of ice out of the bus window and it hit my windshield. It scared the daylights out of me. I looked up just in time to see some object hurling through the air right at my face. The fact that I had a thick piece of safety glass between me and said object didn't register. I ducked anyway, and then the cup splattered all over my car. Great job, anonymous idiot. Why do people do that? Was if too much of a hassle to just hold on to the empty cup until the bus stopped and a proper receptacle could be located? Was the cup too heavy and cumbersome?

But anyway, if I ruled the world I would spend less time arresting folks for smoking a little bit of pot now and again and concentrate my efforts on punishing the litterbugs. Get caught throwing trash on the ground and there would not only be a hefty fine, but also time spent on trash picking up duty. A LOT of time. And that is for the first offense. The second violation would involve jail time and daily picking up of the trash wearing prison garb. Maybe that would stop the trashiness.
Its inexcusable that anybody would just toss their litter out of the window, or on the ground or whatever. It doesn't just disappear into thin air when it leaves your hand.

Allergies?

What in the world is going on with me? Is it allergies or a cold? All I know is that it is making me miserable and has been getting progressively worse as the day wears on. Hopefully its just allergies. ??? I do not want to be sick right now.

But besides the fact that I can't breathe and my nose and eyes are leaking like crazy, I am still a happy camper. Its spring. I am still indescribably happy that my husband and sister are on speaking terms again. And I am heading to sunny Puerto Rico in 2 weeks. Yay! Life is definitely good.

Also, we spent several hours last night with a man who specializes in Federal employee benefits. And yes, he does want to sell us more insurance. But he gave us a plethora of useful information, lots of it were things that we were NOT aware of, too, so it was a real learning experience. He helps people get their ducks in a row for retirement, and had amassed whole folders of info and figures that were exclusive to us. What an eye opener. For starters, we had planned (hoped) to retire at 56. And while that sounds like a really long time away, its really only 8 and a half years. Less than a decade. But according to these figures, seeing it all in cold hard facts printed in black and white? Well....we could retire then. But if we could manage to stick it out for 4 more years, and retire at 60, we would have quite a bit more security for the long haul. I never knew that those few years could make such a HUGE difference in the income for the rest of your life.

Anyway, while hearing that information was a little bit sad, I also believe that knowledge is power. At least we now know exactly where we stand, and where we need to be and how to get there. He was impressed with our progress so far, and felt like we were really on the right track so...? Overall, I guess its good news.

I am SOOOO Happy

Really, I am extremely happy right now. If you know us, as a family, very well at all, then you also are probably aware of the rift between my husband and my sister. They haven't spoken to each other in about 5 years. And while its not terribly difficult to carry on not speaking when you live in different states, it still is tragic, and has been very hard for me. The incident that precipated this saga is not important, and in fact, I wasn't even there, so I don't know the whole story. Let's let sleeping dogs lie for now. But what IS important is that my husband went down to SC for his high school reunion this weekend. And, whether on a whim, or whether he planned it, he stopped by my sister's house and now....they are speaking again. I don't know how but I don't care. I am just grateful.

I feel as though a huge heavy stone has been taken off my neck.

I didn't go the the reunion with Bruce. For one thing, I didn't go to this high school. And we are leaving for Puerto Rico in a couple of weeks, so I didn't want to take off and travel right now. But the main reason? Is that I did not want to go to SC and not be able to see or stay with my sister and her family. And I just didn't see how I could, unless I stayed, and Bruce went to a hotel. How strange would that have felt?

I can't explain how difficult this whole thing has been. Its impossible to take sides when it involves your husband, the man who fathered your children, and the only other living human being who shares that peculiar mix of DNA from both of your parents. The only other person who knows every single detail of what your childhood was like. And my childhood? It was strange. It was not abusive. I was not neglected or beaten or tortured. But my family was private to the point of being secretive. There were so many things that I have found out later, as an adult, that gave me some of those "A-Ha!" moments. So thats why this was the way it was.....Some day, I really do want to try to write it all down. If for no other reason than to try and make sense of it all in my head. But there are still things that I just have to fill in the blanks with my imagination because the delusions, and secrets were really just that good. But now is not the time for that. My sister is the only other person who gets that our childhood was one of those things that you will never quite understand unless you lived it. You just had to be there.

And now I am celebrating because its over and we can all visit again. Be normal again. It is so wonderful to me, and I am so thankful and proud of my husband for having the fortitude to let go of anger and try to make amends. I think he just racked up a whole boatload of good karma this weekend.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Did you wear green today? I did. But I didn't make the traditional corned beef and cabbage. I saw a lot corned beef briskets and large cabbages on display at the grocery store this past weekend. I forget how much I like that meal. But I didn't buy it and cook it today. I am beginning to get a craving for it though, so maybe I will make sometime soon. Anyway, we had baked salmon with a lemon and brown sugar marinade, and it was really good. Probably a bit healthier than corned beef. And I tried a new recipe for a tomato/cucumber salad. I feel so bored with the standard stuff that I make over and over again, so I am on the hunt for new recipes. The 2 main requirements are that they have to be tasty, and EASY. I'm not a fussy, complicated recipe kind of gal.

I am also in need of a change in the way of my hair. I am going on Friday to get something done. I'm not sure what. I am going to look around online and see if anything strikes my fancy. Maybe I will get hair extensions and have it super long...LOL. Probably not, it sounds like too much work. Like my cooking, the hair has to be EASY.

Roofers are Scary

We have a new roof! Can I get an Amen to that? They finished up today, and while we still have a large dumpster parked in our driveway (where they disposed of all the old shingles), we are hopeful that it will be removed tomorrow before we get home from work. But this whole roofing experience wreaked havoc in kitty world. We already knew that noises from up above, like when we were installing those water heaters in the attic, scared the cats almost to death. In fact, to this day they run for cover if they see us go anywhere near the pull-down attic steps. I hadn't considered how the roof work was going to affect them. Not that we could forgo something as important as a roof to accommodate the whims of our cats. But when I got home from work yesterday and saw the crew (we weren't exactly sure when they were going to arrive), my first thought was uh-oh....unhappy kitties ahead.

It took me a while to find them. Usually they run out to greet us, but not yesterday. And I have to agree with them that the noise was terrible. They were stomping and hammering, and sometimes they would slam down another pallet of shingles that would literally shake the whole entire house. It almost scared ME. I finally found Vixen hiding under our bed, and no amount of pleading and coaxing would bring her out. Omen was even harder to find, because she was in our bed, under the covers....way down near the foot. Both of them were cowering and nervous and their eyes were huge. Poor things. They didn't come out until the roofers were long gone for the day, and they didn't eat any dinner, either.
It was a shorter day of roof work today though, the crew was gone by the time I got home. The cats seemed better, so maybe they kind of got used to it...?

Anyway, Bruce is heading down to South Carolina this weekend for his high school reunion. I am not into reunions all that much. He enjoys it though, and he keeps up with a lot of the people he knew way back when. My school was just so different. It was really large, and while we all had our group of friends, beyond that..? Well, I could go all day and not have any of the same people in my 6 classes per day. It was more impersonal, more like college I guess. There were people in my graduating class that I never even met before. So...? I am not going. I don't think Bruce is too disappointed in my absence. The main reasons are work and the animals, and the fact that we are taking off for vacation in a couple of weeks, which just makes leaving right now a little more tricky. I hope he has a good time. Last time, maybe 5 years ago, he drove all the way down there (about a 6 hour drive), and no one that he wanted to see showed up, so he drove right back home again. What an exhausting trip.
This year there are things going on both Friday and Saturday night, so I hope he has a better time.