I Am One Lucky Lady

That’s right, lucky. Lucky my husband still finds me attractive and wants to spend time with me. This thought occurred to me after our last date night. The date was REALLY nice (thanks to my SIL and Mom for watching the kids!) but I really need to step it up.

We have limited funds so the only clothing I have is clothing I can wear all the time. No room or money for clothes I wear once and don’t fit into again or only wear on “special” occasions so I have one or two shirts that are classified as “nice” that I wear for any occasion that I don’t have to lug the kids with me. It usually is not a tee shirt, and the only thing that does not have mom stains. My current “nice” shirt is one I’ve had for over a year and can be seen in almost any picture of me since it was purchased. Both because it is photo worthy/”nice” and because I am so infrequently photographed. Go ahead, check out my facebook photos, you’ll figure out what shirt I’m talking about. What do I wear with my “nice” shirt you ask? Why “nice” jeans of course! In order to meet these qualifications they have to be clean and not stained. I know,  I set a pretty high bar. I can’t remember the last time I wore a dress. Possibly at the last wedding I went to(so long ago I can’t even remember when it was)  and even that is a dress that made an appearance at any function that required a dress. This has been my go to dress for at least….4 years???? Sheesh.

Then of course there are the jewels. I do “fancy” with costume jewelry. I’ve never done jewelry well. I’m allergic to most of it so I frequently end up with a red mark on my neck/chest and can be seen tugging at it most of the evening only to tear it off in frustration and toss it to the bottom of my purse (which I only have one of so it has to “go with” anything. Oh who am I kidding, it doesn’t match most of my stuff, but still it goes with me) The same goes for earrings and if for some reason I was diluted enough to think I could make it through the night with a bracelet on it goes into the purse too, usually first.

Usually we go to a movie and always the bookstore (yes, we ARE awesome!) so I end up with my glasses on that don’t stay on well so they slide down my nose making me look like I should be working at the bookstore. Then there is the food stain on the front of me because I am genetically destined to drop something on my chest at every meal. It is in my DNA. Oh and by the end of the evening my hair has gone flat and crazy or frizzy and crazy, crazy being the common denominator.

So… freshly stained shirt that you’ve seen a million times, red broken out neck and chest, no jewels, crazy hair with the glasses that make me look ancient…what do you think Sweetie?

You know you want to get with this.

Fencing in the Herd: Part 1

The Herd is getting a fence! And since this is such a big part of our lives right now and will be taking place over the next 4-6 weeks I thought I would start a mini blog series about our fencing adventures!

Part 1: The Takedown

When trying to save every possible penny on the cost of the fence you might find that you have to do a lot of the work yourself. Enter Zippercow

Our rather large fence will require a rather large chunk of money (one that is larger than what we have)  so we will be taking out the nuisance trees and moving rocks (again) out of the way of the fence line so  we can save a little money. I say “we” but as with most of our large undertakings my role (mostly) is to keep children out from under foot (or falling trees). Zippercow is a trooper for sure! This was one of his first tasks. Notice the pile of trees as tall as our son? That’s only part of it.

Just think, in a couple years Little Moo will be old enough to play along and pretend daddy is cutting him down.

It’s just the beginning. Stay tuned for more riveting stores of Fencing In The Herd!

*yes I use riveting pretty loosely

Dumb Dog.

I’m sure this will come as no great shock to those that know me, but I don’t like dogs. And to be even more honest I’m afraid of most of them. Yes, I’m a grown ass woman who is afraid of dogs. It isn’t the running away from them screaming and crying kind of scared, but if I don’t know a dog I give it a pretty wide berth and won’t be the first to say “come here doggy so I can pet you!”.  I am not really sure where it comes from other than once, when I was a teenager, I was walking down the street after dark and the neighbors bull mastiff came at me from down the street  in a full run showing me his teeth snarling. Now mind you this was a dog that I was VERY familiar with as I regularly babysat the children of this neighbor. He was close enough to bite me (all the while I was shrieking his name) before he came to a dead stop and started wagging his tail with his big ol’ tongue lopped out the side of his mouth waiting for a pat. I may have wet myself a little. Maybe I was afraid of dogs before this. Either way, I’m not a fan. I don’t like the drool, the barking, cleaning up the poop. Big ones that are hyper and little yippy ones. Not. A. Fan.

So today when a lost dog wandered up to our back door I silently whispered a sigh of relief that we are putting a fence up this summer. No more wandering dogs coming into our yard and scaring the bejesus out of me or leaving their “presents” on our lawn.

I was less than pleased that the dog decided to set up camp in our front yard, especially since I had to escort the children to the van to get Little Moo from the bus stop. Of course the kids didn’t mind. Niecey-poo was ecstatic and Littlest Moo (who was at that time screaming and flailing about wildly) even stopped, clapped and said “doggy”. They were all even more excited to see that the dog was sleeping on our front porch when we returned from the bus stop.  You would have thought Santa made a mid February encore appearance the way those kids lit up. This dog was clearly nice and didn’t mind the kids so I let them pet the dog and we brought it a bowl of fresh water to drink. It went back to sleeping in the yard.

Damn dog.

From time to time I entertain the thought of having a dog, for the boys you know. Because all little boys should have a canine companion! I think about how it would be nice to take walks with a dog and have it sit at my feet in the evenings. It would have to be a Golden Retriever or generic yellow, lumbering, friendly, low key dog. Guess what our visitor was?

Yep. I brought him the kids’ table scraps and it wagged its tail and then rolled over for me to pet its belly. He stuck around for most of the morning and until just recently was sleeping up against our front door. I hope the dog finds his home (although is seems less likely with him sleeping in our yard) but if he doesn’t…

Can we keep him dear? We’ll have a fence….

 

 

 

***This would be a less than pleased Zippy watching the dog in our front yard.

I Don’t Think Skinny Capri-alls Are in Fashion.

Children. They are the best (and most expensive) entertainment ever!

After a successful workout and trip to Costco we returned home and proceeded to get the children ready for bed.  Littlest Moo has recently discovered naked and let’s just say, he’s a fan. He stops mid run every couple feet to inspect his parts and continues on his way. We happen to find this quite hilarious. So while the little one was pleased as pie to be removing clothes the older one, he was inspecting clothes his Grams brought from when Zippercow was little. That’s right, clothes that are more than 25 years old. Uh…thanks?  Little Moo was quite taken with some  awesome Hawaiian shirts, mostly because they have pockets. Apparently this is a thing with him now, shirts with pockets to carry the oh-so-important  things he needs to carry. He came across a particularly striking pair of overalls with matching flannel shirt . Matching because they have the same flannel on the denim as the shirt. He asked if he could have them. They are a size 2T and I told him as much. His response was a to melt and shriek about how he never has overalls. Um…what? I was going to argue that they were too small again but thought screw it  and told him “ I don’t care, go put them on if you want”. So…

He did.

Little Moo: “Mommy, can I keep these?”

Me: “Um…they look a little small.”

Little Moo: “But I like them!”

Zippercow: “I don’t think skinny capri-alls are in fashion bud.”

Priceless.