wacky wednesday wanderings

just a few funny things the g-kid has been up to:

sitting in the drive thru at hardees yesterday morning (yes, i said morning. I was up at 6:30 AM to pick up the munchkin.) i look in the rearview mirror and see james swatting and grabbing at..well.. nothing. of course the 1st thought is oh, no. he's seeing stuff that isn't there. i casually ask:

me: whatcha doin' james?

james: what are dese fuzzy dings, nonna?

me: are they really small and kind of floating around?

james: yeah, what are day? i trying to tatch dem but i tant. (the hard c sound has yet to be mastered)

me: they are just little specks of dust floating around. keeping trying to catch one. (figure that should occupy him for at least a min. or until the food is ready)

james: i dont like dem. i tant tatch dem. (furiously waving now, trying to get them away from him)

me: its ok. they are just dust. it wont hurt you.

james: mommy's tar don't have dese.

*great, guilt trip from the 3 y/o because my car isn't clean enough for his standards*

me: yes it does. everybody's does. you just can't see them unless the sun is shining really bright inside the car.

we pulled up some so now we were out of the sun.

me: see they are gone now.

james: yep, day are

that seemed to satisfy him :)

today it is beautiful outside so we went out to play in the leaves. i have been waiting for all of the elements to come together in harmony for this moment for the last few weeks. i had to wait for the leaves to fall (obviously). then they had to not be wet from recent rain. and finally, it had to be warmer that a witch's t.. um... well digger's a.. um.. let's just say it had to be warm.

so we swept up some leaves in a pile and he jumped in...

and then, of course, my adorable little ocd neat freak had to brush all of the leaves off. even going so far as to take his hat off just in case one sneaked in there :)

one final cute g-kid moment. he saw a lady bug on me and thought it was hilarious. then said ladybug flew off of me towards him. his reaction? yep, duck and run. yes, my boy g-kid is terrified of most all bugs. he tries to pretend for me that he isnt petrified when i try to introduce him to the "nice" bugs and "nighttime butterflies" (moths), but he isn't fooling anybody. so the aforementioned ladybug landed nearby and my chicken corageous james decides he will scare it away with his mcD toy that sings "i like to move it, move it". he squats beside the bug and shakes the toy at it (causing it to sing) for a good 2-3 min. i asked him if that was scaring the ladybug away. his response was confident and assured.

james: yep. see her's twalling away...

anniversary excursion....finally...part two

just to reassure you, my hubby actually had a good time on this trip. he doesnt always look like he is having fun, but as he says "how can you tell if i'm smiling or not? the 'stache covers it up." so i tell him of course you can tell the difference, now smile for this one! this is what i get:

i mean really! in what language or culture does smile=raise your eyebrows and open your eyes wide so you look like a deer caught in the head lights?! couldnt resist making fun of hubby. now on with the show!

after the lost river cave tour and nature walk that we took, we decided to go try and find this historical italianate house. after much driving around we finally found it ( i didnt think hubby would really be interested in seeing this house so i didnt bring directions to it). unfortunately, we got there right at 4pm and that was closing time, but it was a beautiful house and i hope to go back and see inside of it someday. here is a plaque describing the house and a picture of the front of the house:

since we had driven all around the old part of town, we (meaning me, hubby drives i navigate), decided to try to find our way back to the motel a different route. we probably couldnt come back the way we came if we tried anyways. we had found the house by following those handy little brown signs directing you to state parks or historical points of interest. well, i think they sucked forgot a couple of signs, so we actually passed it and then wandered around until we happened upon it. SO back to our trip thru the older downtown area... it wasnt very interesting. (our downtown is way more attractive now that they have "restored" it. actually McMinnville, TN is one of google's 3D towns.) we came to an intersection and i looked down the end of a road and saw this:

so of course i directed hubby to turn down this road so we could see what this huge building was. well it turns out to be Western Kentucky University's building (i have no clue what its called. some kind of SomebodyImportantLastName Hall) it was a cool building with a statue out front and a copper dome on top:

well when we reached this building we turned to the right and followed the road down the hill. all of a sudden hubby and i looked at each other.

me: um, i think we are actually ON the campus now, somehow

hubby: how did that happen?

me: i dont know. you would think they would warn you somehow. we need to get out of here.

hubby: how? where?

me: look! over there they are lining up floats for some kind of election parade. uh, oh. i think we are heading that way. (me scanning around, there has a to be a way out of here!) look, over there! i see the stadium. we went past that on the way in, but on the other side. the main hwy has to be that way. turn here.

hubby: i hope you can get us back to the hotel. i'm hungry.

me: (full of false bravado) of course i can.

and i actually did! now most of you are probably thinking, what's the big deal? so you went on campus? for some reason me & hubby don't have much luck when we get inside of a park, campus, anything like that. poor hubby had to drive around ft. benning with his ex for HOURS trying to find their way back out. hehe it was pretty funny too. stuck with "the b" for all that time, with nobody else to ease the tension. lol and i was back at the hotel waiting in comfort.

we made it back to the hotel just in time for me to snap this great sunset shot:

the tree in front is a little cherry tree that actually had fruit on it. i spent a lot of time by it on my smoke breaks. we both smoke, but not inside so we get non-smoking rooms and suffer the weather.

next morning is monday, my birthday! :) and also checkout day :( but we are heading up to mammoth cave to go on a short little tour before heading back home so i dont get too bummed about checking out. hubby wanted to be back home before it was dark. he really isnt much of a traveler and would rather be @ home playing in his shop than exploring, but he loves me so he lets me drag him around every now and then.

we got to the cave a little early so i hit the souvenir store and bought a bunch of little things for mementos. then we were off on a short little trip to the frozen niagra formation. as we were listening to the tour guide before we left, i realized we i had picked the wrong tour. hubby wanted short so we wouldnt be here too late, but i had forgotten that i noticed that some tours had age limits, which meant no little rug rats running around. sorry moms, i'm a grandma myself, but i'm not too fond of unruly brats on tours w/us. raise them w/some manners and i wont try to avoid the little heathens :) this tour was not one of those child free tours. so now we had to use some strategy. we got on the bus right behind the driver cuz we heard one of the demons bleacher creatures hollering about riding in the back. then when we got ready to go thru the cave we positioned ourselves right behind the tour guide. (lost river tour we never got to hear the guide due to poor positioning strategy and jabbering little monsters rug rats) we learn fast. we had a much better tour experience this time. we saw the frozen niagra formation:

and many more formations. this one i really liked and named myself because the guide never mentioned it. i call it the hand formation (woohoo how original and witty...NOT):

sadly, that marks the end of this novel saga. we went home by the interstate and shortest route, instead of finding back roads. hubby was in shop withdrawal by this time, so i didnt push my luck :) i wont bore yall any more with all of the pics that i took, but you might see random vacation shots in my future posts. we had a great time on our little weekend adventure. hopefully, i didnt torture yall too bad with my home movies posts.

fun filled friday

YEAHHH!!! we have finally firmed up plans and me, mom, aunt, & cousin are all going to see Twilight tomorrow afternoon! woohooo!!! can ya tell i'm a little excited?? if you like to read fiction, you HAVE to read this series by stephanie meyers. (it is about vampires and such so if you dont like that stuff, it might not be your cup of tea). BUT it is a totally different viewpoint of vampires and werewolves and such. and although it is a young adult book, it is very well written and will keep you up all night for 14 hours straight reading on the edge of your seat. it is hard to explain the strong attraction? feelings? addiction? that this series has had on me. i dont know, maybe i just really enjoy an escape from reality, but these books are as good or better than the harry potter books IMHO.

i feel like a little kid with a big exciting day tomorrow :) i dont like to go out to the movies much. well to be honest cuz i'm a tight wad and more comfortable watching at home where i have a pause and rewind button for when i miss something. also, the theater in my po-dunk town is naaaasty. we are going to go 45 min away just to go to a new theater instead of ours in town cuz it's so gross. it even has holes in the screen. i mean come on, its a movie theater. how can you have screens with holes in them??

well this was just gonna be a short "haha look what i get to do tomorrow while the rest of the world slaves away" post, but i kinda got a little worked up thinkin bout the local theater,

oh, and i have some great plans for a visit from FWM if i can talk her into coming here ;) ...i wonder if she's seen Deliverance or Wrong Turn ...muhahahaha

woeful wednesday

you know your wednesday is not gonna go good when you start the day at 6:30am worshipping the porcelain god. no i didnt pull a cough syrup bender. i wish. i have no idea what made me sick. i think that it might have been something i ate last nite.
maybe is was the coconut pie (just one slice), or the german chocolate cookie (just one i swear!), or it could have been the oatmeal creme pie (the small size), or possibly the egg nog (virgin-the eggnog, that is). i dont know, but i should have known wednesday was not looking good for me.

i took the grandkid to the library. they didnt have the next book in one series i'm reading. i'm 4th on the list for janet evanovich's fearless fourteen. they don't have stephanie meyer's the host (which my mother has but never seems to remember to give to me)

i got home from babysitting, stirred and tasted my chili that i was cooking for darts tonight. blah! it was so not like my normal good chili. so i worked on that in between showering and dressing for darts. then i remembered that a fellow darter and my step-son were expected at the house soon. i thought maybe i should actually do the dressing part before the cooking so i wouldn't blind anybody that showed up early (don't they always when you dont want them to??)

and then the night ended with a thorough trouncing in darts. against a team we beat earlier in the season. it was not fun. well, that's a lie. it was fun, but winning is much more fun :)

at least we were good hosts. i brought the "souped up" chili and everybody liked it. some ppl even had 3-4 bowls of it! guess instead of all of this whining i should just be happy that my chili was a success.

naaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh

weaselMomma's one word meme

here it is...

Where is your cell phone? here

Where is your significant other? work

Your hair color? blondish

Your mother? loving

Your father? dead

Your favorite thing? reading

Your dream last night? wierd

Your dream/goal? happiness

The room you’re in? living

Your hobby? scrapbooking

Your fear? cockroaches

Where do you want to be in 6 years? painless

Where were you last night? home

What you’re not? liar

One of your wish-list items? cd Player -ok so i cheated thats 2 words but heck i dont want a cd and if i just put player who knows what yall would think :)

Where you grew up? sarasota

Last thing you did? this

What are you wearing? pajamas

Your TV? off

Your pet? outside

Your computer? ok

Your mood? awake

Missing someone? megan

Your car? minivan

Something you’re not wearing? bra

Favorite store? book

Your summer? fun!

Love someone? yep

Your favorite color? fuscia

When is the last time you laughed? yesterday

Last time you cried? yesterday ( no hubby didn't beat on me, i finished a stupid book & the main character died. lol i am turning into the person that cries at tv, books, just about anything lately)

anniversary excursion....finally...part one

the long awaited, much anticipated (yeah right) anniversary excursion to Bowling Green, KY and Mammoth Cave....


with the whole plurisy thing happening we didnt actually get to start out until saturday morning. we had to make a detour before we started on the "official" trip. our friend and fellow cruiser had passed away a couple of months ago, and his wife was having a yard sale of all of his shop tools, car parts, and asst. junk that men like to collect in their shops. well ole jim had 3 shops. needless to say by the time we stopped buying we had spent 300 bucks and the back of the mini van was packed full of clangy, rattling, metal parts.

(pretend i was smart enough to take a pic of the loaded van and imagine it right here)

so we looked at each other and said, well should we just go on with all of this stuff in the van or go back home, unload, and then start our trip over. i looked at rickEy to see what he was wanting to do, then i thought an hour back home, unload, an hour to get back here....forget that lets go! so our adventure began. (map of route) we enjoy taking back roads more than the interstate so you can see the cool farms, houses, trees, and fields instead of boring billboards and other cars and of course the hubby has to look for old trucks in barns or the woods. so we had a gorgeous drive to bowling green. kentucky got more rain than we did in TN so the trees were much more colorful there.

we checked in sat. afternoon and just kindof chilled and went to eat dinner. sunday we headed out for our first adventure to The Lost River Cave & Valley. It's about a 15 min. walk thru the woods and by some gorgeous blue holes:


















the blue color comes from limestone particles in the water reflecting from the sunlight. after a short walk we come to the entrance of the cave. There are signs posted telling that jesse james hid out in the cave in 1868 and also both sides of the civil war used the area as encampments. In the 1930's there was an "underground nite club" and they held balls and weddings in the wide covered entrance area.


so now we actually get to get into a flat bottom boat that has seats down each side. there is a metal railing down the middle of the boat that we all have to lean down and duck our heads to avoid a concussion (woohoo potential danger...gotta get a pic of this!)

that was a pretty cool little trip. we got to see some cave crickets, well barely. it was a very short little boat trip and very dim around the few lights they had placed. this river is still undergoing major efforts to clean and repair damage from ignorant ppl who thought "hey, here is a sink hole. lets dump all our trash in it, and it will magically disappear!" morons. all that garbage eventually ends up in the underground streams and rivers that we drink from because of the karst topography.



now we are back out of the boat and i want to walk the trails that they have around there. it really is a gorgeous little bit of woods in the middle of a city. we walk by old powder houses and head for the butterfly habitat.


hubby: it's fall, i think it's too cold for butterflies..

me: what? oh, i know it's fall but maybe they have a nice little heated home for the butterflies


hubby: (looks at me to see if i look like i am gonna give up on this little side trip) ok, lets go


me: reading the signs about double checking yourself in the mirror to see if you have any hitchhiker butterflies on you, invisioning walking thru a garden with hundreds of butterflies, typical daydreaming thoughts as i am waiting to enter the habitat.
this is what i find:

the only butterfly in the place...








...notice the determined photographer (me) goes so far as to stage the DEAD butterfly by one of the only blooms left in the habitat.

me: i wanted pics of butterflies! i dont care if it's dead. you wont be able to tell in the pic unless you look real close. now, go look for more dead ones. maybe we can get a whole flock herd bunch of 'em.



that's all for now, folks. i will continue our adventure in the next installment unless there are too many pleas for mercy : ) hey i just realized something. this is like home movies for the masses. hahaha. now i dont have to clean the house and lure you to the living room where the projector is all set up. of course i wont know if you decide to leave during the middle of the show this way either...hmmm...nope still better this way. anything that means i dont have to clean 4 company wins in my book.

to be consistant or not to be

yes, i am here, no i didnt quit, and i did warn yall from the beginning that i had no idea whether i could do this regularly. now the reasons i have been so slow to post are numerous, but i'm gonna make you read them all anyway.

1. i am like a raccoon, i am easily distracted by bright shiny things. i sit down at my dashboard trying to decide what to write, and then i see some new post from somebody that i am following. what do i do? i go off and read blogs for like an hour (or till my hind-end starts to fall asleep) so by then i'm tired of blogs.
2. i need to post about my anniversary excursion to bowling green, ky BUT that means i have to go thru my pics and crop, adjust, etc. and i am feeling too lazy busy to do all of that right now.
3. (this is a really good excuse, but only for the last few days) my aunt (mom's identical twin sis)has been in the hospital since tuesday so i have been either there or watching my grandson all week and i'm tired! and finally...
4. probably the biggest reason is that i keep reading all of these great, funny, witty, smart blogs and i am having blog anxiety(not envy..well maybe a little envy) that there is no way i could write something as smart or as funny.

so is that enough to convince yall that it really isnt my fault that i am not writing more? actually now that i think about it ... it is all of yall's fault that i am not. so stop being so funny...please?

my weirdness and...meme

i have been commanded to bore yall with my weirdness idiosyncrasies. weaselMomma said i had to do this meme (which i had to look up cuz i have never heard the term b4. here is the deff:

In the context of web logs / 'blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).

sounds impressive but i think its just a fancy word for another kind of survey. so here it is, My 7 ways of weirdness:

1. i hate mornings! always have, always will. nothing will change that fact. even the Army couldnt drum that out of me, and let me tell you, they are very good at changing ppl. just not as good as me and my own internal clock that screams SLEEEPP at least until 10 or 11 or so :)

2. i, like weaselMomma, am a very cheap wife to keep around. i like to save money **gasp**, i hate shopping 4 clothes and pretty much shopping in general, unless i have a lot of spare money (haha), and i am shopping for someone else.

3. my husband now has the final say on all matters pertaining to fashion. he saved me from looking like the ugly duckling at his son's wedding, so i now bow to his wisdom.

4. also like wM, my feet are cold all of the time, but i CANT wear socks to keep them warm. i only wear socks when i have shoes on, otherwise they make me smother. dont ask. just believe. i breathe thru my feet, ok??

5. i dont eat vegetables. at all. well, 'cept for fried okra. i just discovered that one last year. its the first cooked green vege i have ate voluntarily since childhood. (dont force ur kids to eat stuff, it really messes with their heads for a long time!)

6. i am extremely competative. i can turn anything into a contest. i even liked taking tests in school just so i could see how much better i did (hopefully) than everybody else. i had a really good idea for the microbiologist's contamination fairy contest, but unfortunately i cannot put my vision down on paper near as well as i can see it.

7. you cant tell by my pics, but i actually hate to eat. i would be thrilled to death if i could get one of those tubes in my stomach so i could just squeeze all the healthy stuff that my body needs straight in there. do not pass mouth, do not collect any fat, calories, or cholesterol. just think how nice it would be to never have to this conversation ever again:
"what do you want for dinner tonight, darling?"
"i dont know, what do you want?"
"i dont care, whatever you want to get." (meaning i'm not hungry, dont want to cook, and dont want to feel guilty for not wanting to cook you something for dinner, lol)
"you decide, youre the picky eater."
ugh! i really hate going thru that everytime we decide to go out to eat somewhere.