portion control

impulse buying

my nonna died when i was five or maybe six ... my parents had to borrow the money to pay for her funeral and burial ... they decided that would not happen to their own family, and bought a funeral and burial plan ... my mother would buy a money order every month and send it off to Olinger to prepay for their eventual demise...  

i know that i was just a little kid, but i remember thinking

what an unselfish thing to do for the people who love you...

fast forward to this time last year... 

i had a couple of life-threatening experiences that some of you already know about and realized that i had never taken care of my own Final Arrangements; but i wasn't well enough to do anything about it at the time...

and by the time my health crises were beaten to submission resolved, i was too weary to act...

fast forward to now...

i have noticed that my children are attending a LOT of funerals for their friends' parents...

 and that those parents are my own peers...

and i made an appointment to Take Care of Business...

it was not fun...

but it was enlightening...

it turns out that there is a LOT of UPSELLING in the funeral business...

i went into the meeting determined to NOT opt for anything other than basic cremation - no urn, no catering, no memorial, no viewing, no service, no flowers, no creative financing that includes a life insurance policy should i decide to keel over before the Plan is paid for, no, no, no, thank you...

it took a while to convince the salesperson that

 no, i do NOT want fries with that...

i took out my credit card so i could get the Rewards points, and prepaid for making an Ash of Myself...

and when i was finished with all of that, Auntia and i went to Woodley's Fine Furniture to order a dresser for her room... 

it was NOT an impulse buy - she has been planning her purchase since last year's 45% off sale, and knew exactly what she wanted...

and we did what we always do when we walk into a furniture store - we sat in every comfortable-looking chair and sat on every comfortable-looking couch and played Lightbrownielocks and Silverlocks... 

this one is too high 

this one is too low

this one is too soft 

this one is too hard

this one's arms are too wide

this one's seat is too deep

this one is butt ugly

this one is too fancy

this one is too scratchy

this one is too slick

this one isn't made for stitching

this one isn't made for reading

this one is just about right

this one is too ... wait ... what?!?

what?!?

what you said...

try this one - it isn't ugly and it isn't fancy and it's the right height for both of us and the arms are just right for stitching or reading and it's leather so it will wipe clean and it isn't scratchy or slick and your feet reach the floor and my knees aren't up around my chin and it's just the right amount of firm...

but it's red...

yes, it IS red. but it comes in these other colors...

Cara the Chair is red...

an old picture of Cara the Chair - named after Cara the Mord Sith from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series of books

Cara the Chair was an impulse buy and nothing goes with her...

but this couch would go with her...

and we were gonna wait till the little ones are all in school before we buy a couch...

that's Three. More. Years.

three years of arguing with them about what is okay and what isn't...

and we will teach them what is and isn't acceptable...

but it's red...

our sunflower pillows would look awesome on it...

but it's red...

it's 45% off...

still, it's a LOT of money...

and Awesome!!! would look awesome on it...

Awesome!!! WOULD look awesome on it ... maybe it's time to rethink the living room...

let's go home so we can bring back the sunflower pillow and an autumn quilt and see how they look...

still ... it's a lot of money...

and so we did...

the quilt looked awesome...

the sunflower pillow looked awesome...

but i still wasn't convinced...

Clifford was gonna be a HUGE investment, even with 45% off...

and i'd just spent all that money on the prepaid cremation...

and that got me to thinking which is always kinda scary...

thinking about things like Life being Short...

and Uncertain...

and the fact that there was no Comfortable Place to Rest in the Here and Now...

and the fact that my body isn't gonna have a Comfortable Place to Rest in the After because i'd opted for the No Frills Package...

and Comfort being Under-Rated...

and Jumping In With Both Feet being kinda fun...

and that is how buying a Big Red Couch can be an Impulse Buy...

To be always intending to make a new and better life but never to find time to set about it is as ... to put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to the next until you're dead.

Og Mandino

drumroll, please

introducing...

Clifford ... the Big Red Couch

i dragged the duct-taped-cushionless-stained-ripped-and-torn Queen Anne chair that i bought at a neighbor's garage sale for $25 eighteen years ago to the curb yesterday... 

and the OldManLeatherChair donated by a neighbor who didn't want to pay extra for the trash guy to haul it away will be moving on to shaggier carpet in a few days... 

we haven't owned a couch in a gazillion years... 

and for the first time in her Life, Auntia sat upon a brand spanking new piece of furniture... 

woo hootie hoo!!!

So, I'm lying on the couch and Laura walks in and I say

 "Free at last" 

and she says,

 'You're free all right, you're free to do the dishes' 

So I say,"You're talking to the former President, baby' 

and she says,

'Consider this your new domestic policy agenda'

George W. Bush

bone dry

wooly bully

lest you think that all we do around here is eat...

he's a complicated guy

this guy is so AWESOME!!! 
his outline and some of his fill-in-the-blank is based on a drawing in a coloring book by Sue Coccia - i lurve this woman's art - the rest are things that are meaningful to me...
 that's right, it IS all about me...

all right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup
i embroidered bullion knots to fill in the pine cone ... i lost count of how many times i stabbed myself and had to stop stitching so i wouldn't bleed all over the big guy...


If all the beasts were gone, man would die from great loneliness of spirit. 
For whatever happens to the beasts,
soon happens to man.
All things are connected. 
Ted Perry, screenwriter for Home

veggie table

when i read Thimbleanna's comment on firecrackers...

And THAT is why I don't like jalapenos. You never know if you're going to get hot or mild. I prefer to keep my tastebuds in working order. (But those look good with the cream cheese and bacon anyway. I suppose it would be cream cheese overkill to use a green pepper, huh?)

i decided that she has to be the Most Brilliant Person in the World - cream cheese, bacon, and peppers without the heat...

but...

you had to know that was coming

green peppers are BIG... 

it would take an entire package of silver-wrapped bliss 

aka Philadelphia cream cheese 

to stuff just one...

what to do?!?

what to do?!?

what to ... wait!!! 

i remembered seeing tiny bell peppers at the grocery store and wanting to buy them just because they were so doggone cute...

 Auntia told me to wait - she had planted a mini bell pepper plant and we would have tiny peppers in a couple of months... 

mutter mutter mutter

so...

 the next time she sent me on an emergency run to King Soopers to get yet another bag of White Cheddar Cheetos which i swear she goes through faster than green grass through a goose 

i made a detour to the produce aisle and bought a package...

aren't they pretty?!?

neat ... sweet ... petite

shiny!!!

and used my jalapeño corer to clean out the seed pods... 

stuffed them with cream cheese... 

wrapped them with bacon...

 and baked them...

oooo!!! Anna - you would LURVE these!!!

Oh. My. Good. Golly. Gee.

they were really, really, really tasty!!!

who knew that vegetables could taste so doggone good?!?

they were so tasty 

that we decided to make our entire meal vegetarian...

katana corn skewers ... there can be only one

except for the bacon...

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.

Doug Larson

time tracker

 i've been known to watch court shows on TV ... i know, i know - a waste of time, right?!? and yet, for a few minutes every once in a while, i can distract myself from my own Trials and Tribulations by laughing or shaking my head at some of the crazy predicaments people get themselves into...

anywho...

one of the daytime TV judges says that
if it ain't written down, it didn't happen...

hmmmm .... where was i going with this?
oh yeah - i remember...

sometimes i use this blog as a time tracker to remember when i did whatever...
and now i'm thinking that it's not such a good idea cuz more often than not i do not post about the things that i am doing ... or the things i want do ... or the things i am thinking about wanting to do ... or the things that are happening that are just too doggone messed up to commit to the Written Word...

but i digress again...

this little guy...

go ninja! go ninja! go ninja! go!
celebrated his second birthday on july 9 ... which means that it has been two years since Auntia and i gave his mom, Mrs. Moth, a baby shower ... and i thought i'd take a Sentimental Journey down Memory Lane aka a month of sundays posts to look at the Party Pictures and Remember a Fun Time in the Past...
the shower was in june of 2012 - a month before the baby we knew then as Superman but is now Super Sam was born - so i went back to 2012
 and found a post in january
 and then a post written by LuLu as a guest blogger in june..
she mentioned that there was gonna be a party for her baby brother and suggested that she oughta get to open all of his presents ...
the next post was a month later
 and i wrote that my mother died...
and since it is written down, it must have happened...
which makes me sad and caught up in missing her all over again for the seventy-sixth time today...

anywho...

having realized that i never did blog about Sam's shower, i thought i'd better write it down so that it happened...

because Sam was due in july, we decided to go with a red, white & blue/picnic basket/Independence Day/firecracker kinda theme ... our home is a cottage kinda house that is waaaay too small to host more than three or four people, so Auntia and i rented a room at Thornton's Carpenter Recreation Center and transported all the stuff to decorate it - except for the balloons ... we put Mrs. Moth in charge of getting the balloons from her house to the rec center a mile away cuz there was no way all the party stuff was gonna fit in Forrest the Car along with 24 helium-filled mylar balloons...
we found that out when we picked up the balloons a day earlier -  i couldn't see out the back window and both of us sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks when one of the balloons decided to leak...
we had already taken these pictures before she arrived, so the 24 star-shaped red, white & blue floating balloons are missing in action...

the dessert table - bundtinis from Nothing Bundt ... so doggone yummy!!!

oooooo!!! Auntia's World Famous Seven-Layer Salad

more food and drinks

presents and presents and more presents

one of the guest tables ... they all looked pretty much like this one

 a treat basket with cracker jacks and bubbles, a pinwheel and a package of forget-me-knot seeds, tootsie rolls and mints, pop rocks and a firecracker picnic caddy

 i found ALL of the fabrics for 40 of these in our red, white & blue stash...

and the red, white & blue bin is STILL not empty
we spent lots (and lots and lots) of money
 and worked for hours (and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours) to put all of this together...

but it wasn't a REAL party till these two showed up...

Gumdrop and LuLu the World's BEST big and little sisters!!!
two of my beautiful grandbabies!!!

and now it is written...
so it must have happened!!!


So let it be written, so let it be done.
Yul Brynner as Ramses - The Ten Commandments

firecrackers

this is the only kind of fireworks that are legal at our house...

uh huh - i have a special plate just for jalapeño poppers aka firecrackers

Auntia the wuss watched as i ate the first one - it was tasty and not even a little bit spicy...

so she bit into the second one ... i think they heard her gasping for air in the next county ... she finished off the bacon seriously?!? the bacon is why i eat them!!! well - the cream cheese, too - but mostly the bacon!!! and gave the rest of it to me...

i took a bite...

 Oh. My. Good. Golly. Gee. 

it was hot!!! 

my oh my !!!

sheesh!!!

my jalapeño corer must have missed some of the seed pod cuz 

the capsaicin was strong with that one!!!

Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapeños. What you do today might burn your butt tomorrow.

Larry the Cable Guy

peace of cake

i'm not sure how it happened, but Betty Crocker has my number and has been sending me emails about how to impress friends and family by baking impossible-to-duplicate EASY desserts with just a couple of million ingredients and hours and hours a few minutes in the kitchen...

if you follow this link it will take you to what this cake...

Happy Birthday, America!!!

is SUPPOSED to look like ... 

Betsy Ross is the front and center of our founding foreducks

 minus the peace sign...

yeah ... 

maybe not so much, eh?!? 

it would have been nice to know BEFOREHAND that the frosting was gonna melt and the layers would do the slip and slide...

i'm meeeeeeellllllllttttting!!!!

AND it would have been nice to know that i was gonna have enough leftover layers for another (shorter) cake...

ANOTHER ONE?!?

cuz that would have saved me yet another trip to the grocery store to buy more frosting ... by then i had learned my lesson about boot-scooting layers, and channeling my inner Martha anchored them with straws...

 short and stout ... and messy

yeah... 

anywho...

it took me three days of baking during the cooler hours between midnight and 1am - ha ha ha to assemble all the different layers... 

my kitchen counters looked like this...

 will someone please tell Smurfette to get her boobs off the counter?!?

but all over ... baking racks and messy pans everydamnedwhere...

anywho ... 

did you notice the waaaaay cool Mt. Rushmore quilt in the background?!?

are those Presidents stoned?!?

it was a display model from The Quilt Store that had a price tag of $65!!! 

can you believe that?!? just the fabric would have cost that much!!!

now i have a finished Fourth of July quilt with three of my favorite Presidents of the United States of America!!! and i didn't have to make it!!!

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

George Washington

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Thomas Jefferson

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.

Theodore Roosevelt