It Was A Good Idea For A Minute ...

There are so many cute clothes for spring and summer, and I've always thought the crop pants look cool and practical ... so I tried on a pair of jeans-style crop pants the other day. I cringed as I looked in the mirror in the dressing room - ugh. Very bad idea!! I took them off as fast as I could. Nobody should have to look at my awful white legs, not at home and especially not out in public. That's the end of that idea. I'll stick with full-length jeans. I know "what not to wear!"

Easter Sunday

We enjoyed a warm and mostly sunny Easter Sunday - church, family visits, two meals and lots of good conversation. One of us needed a little nap to get through the day. One of us got a fluffy yellow duck from the Easter Bunny. And several of us had some sort of ... Easter Egg Pale Ale? or whatever it was called.

Chris has been working long and hard this week - I've not seen too much of him! Between extra hours at Toyota, and evenings helping with the bathroom remodeling project at Bob and Peggy's, he's had a few really tiring days. It's about 7:30 and he's finally on his way home.

Aunt Hilary and her friend Frannie are in town - well, kind of in town anyway. They arrived Monday evening (the day after Easter)from Iowa, and left this morning (Wednesday) with Mom in tow to drive down into the hills of Eastern Kentucky to visit another nun-friend who lives down there (David, Kentucky, if you can find that dot on the map). Picture Thelma and Louise - lots of gray hair, lots of getting lost probably ... lots of bathroom breaks! I bet they're having fun.

Much later in the week ... I had hoped to write more about Easter but time keeps escaping me so I'm giving up! Let's just say Easter weekend was great, and we had a couple of fun meals with Aunt Hilary while she was in town. The End!

Happy Easter!

Life's Simple Pleasures

We've been enjoying the most perfect spring weather this week. Sunny days, soft breezes, heavenly warm temperatures. The evenings have been cool but not chilly - great for a short bike ride after work. Last night we rode up and down and around the hills of Colerain Twp. ending up at the Lil' Goodie Shoppe on Harrison Ave. We sat at a picnic table and inhaled some (messy) cheese coneys with ice cream for dessert.

More Signs of Spring

The lawn did finally get it's first cut of the season on Sunday afternoon. It was warm and sunny and we got a touch of sunburn since we were outside for probably about 3 hours. Gorgeous! Of course I spent some time dabbling in the flowerbeds, raking out the debris from the winter months and poking around to see what's growing. It's all coming along - coreopsis, coneflower, daylilies, black-eyed susans, catmint, hollyhocks, lupines, mums, cranesbill geraniums, daisies, yarrow. For now, though, I have to be satisfied with the grape hyacinth, daffodils and tulip buds.




Oh, and we finally made a decision on a new car - fuel efficient, great features and fun to drive.

Molly's Birthday

About 10 days ago, on a Monday evening, we gathered to celebrate Molly's 14th birthday. There were presents, cake and ice cream, lots of fun conversation and joking around.

And would you believe ... HE showed up again. I got a picture of him scarfing a piece of birthday cake (once again, nobody talking to him, he was just kind of wandering around by himself in the background). Then I saw him put his cake down and I just managed to snap a picture of him as he grabbed some shopping bags filled with womens and childrens clothing that we'd been going through (outgrown clothes that Amy was looking to pass on). He took off and left through door out to the garage. What's up with THAT? This is a really weird guy - must have some strange fantasies about dressing up in womens clothes? Whoa. He's pushing his luck. (And trust me, from what I've seen of him he'd make quite a homely cross-dresser. Ughh. **Shudder**)

With the Easter holiday this weekend, we're going to have to be careful. This guy is getting bold. We must put a stop to his party-crashing!

Frustration

We spent the better part of our day driving from one car lot to another, Ford, Toyota, Mazda .... around and around we went. Small car? Fuel efficient car? Pick-up truck? Used car? New car? What colors can we live with? What features must we have? With each passing hour I became more confused and less certain about what we needed. What an exercise to have to go through. By the time we finished we were still unclear about which direction to take. We looked at a 1986 Ford F-150 pick-up truck. We talked to our neighbors about their 1998 Honda Civic that they're thinking of selling. And so the chaos continues on into the evening as Chris goes on-line to browse the offerings on Auto Trader. Madness. And I keep thinking that we shouldn't have to be doing this at all, if only that lady hadn't been so careless in her driving on Wednesday. Aaargh. Not fair. We don't need this added stress right now!

We finished our day at Bob and Peggy's house, with the guys tearing out an old green bathtub. Bob has been working on updating their upstairs bath and had it almost cleared out - the tub was all that needed to go. So after a little bit of prep work, out came the tub, down the stairs and out the front door for the garbage men. We had dinner together courtesy of Peggy and Jenna, then headed home.

Tomorrow is an outdoor day - the weather is supposed to be decent, warmish and sunny. So I think our lawn will get its first cut of the season, and we'll do the same down the street at Mr. Gibson's house. He's been getting antsy about his grass getting long and I'm sure he's wondering when in the world we're going to show up to get it cut. Tomorrow!

Another One Bites The Dust

Wednesday afternoon, 1:00 - I decided to run out for a lunch break even though I wasn't really hungry. It was a beautiful spring day, though, so the sun and fresh air were calling my name. Ten minutes later, as I headed down towards the mall, CRASH! a blue car pulled across the intersection in front of me, even though it wasn't her turn. I hardly had time to think, "This is gonna hurt" and it was over. Airbag didn't go off - why? We aren't sure, but it's an older car (1997) so maybe it wasn't working any longer? My glasses had flown off my face, so the rest of the scene was a blur - people talking to me, someone undid my seat belt, a nice man kept telling me the police were on the way, lots of confusion. I just sat still with my eyes shut, breathing, trying not to cry, talked to the people who had stopped. Anyhow, I got a ride to the hospital strapped onto a back board (cruel and unusual punishment but I know they're necessary sometimes) - a nice EMT named Mike chatted with me as I stared at the ceiling of the ambulance. After getting checked out at Mercy and having my neck x-rayed, I was on my way home 3 hours later courtesy of Chris' parents. That was Wednesday.

Sometime during the night on Wednesday into Thursday morning I began to realize that I had the Mother of All Headaches. Pounding, throbbing, making me want to get sick. Later in the morning I had to call Chris at work, ask him to come home and take me back to the ER. They did a CT scan, all normal, thankfully - so it was a combination of concussion and the Percocet making me so sick, most likely. They gave me a shot to calm down the nausea and a shot of pain med of some sort and sent me home again. By the time I went to bed I was feeling somewhat better, and by this morning I was feeling SO good compared to yesterday!

My Friday has been filled with conversations with the insurance company, 2 trips to the Sharonville Police Dept (file a statement, get my drivers license back, get a release form for the towing company) and 2 trips to the car lot to clean out the Tracker and turn in the release form from the PD. So it's good-bye to another little Tracker, hello to a new (used?) something .... that's the next chore. What kind of car do we want vs. what kind of car do we need vs. what can we afford .... decisions, decisions.

One final note to all you who read my lame little blog: ALWAYS, ALWAYS, wear your seat belt! It will save you from serious injury in an accident. ALWAYS wear it. Did I say always? I mean it! OK, I'm off my soapbox now.

(The picture above was taken in December - it doesn't really snow in April in Cincinnati. Not usually, anyway. We're into tornado season now.)

Just Another Sunday

Checking in as the weekend draws to a close. We had a fun day today - started by going to church at 10:00 - a cool sunny morning that was much warmer when we came out at 11 :30. Woohoo - top down on the Tracker on the way home, sunglasses required! We stopped at home just long enough to refuel (that is, I poured a fresh bottle of Mountain Dew for the road) and then headed out to the homestead in West Chester for a quick visit with the parents and to bring the bike home for the season. (We stored it in their garage for the winter since they've got extra room. We made them promise that they would not take it for a ride under any circumstances. I don't think they did.)

Then we just had to take the dogs to the park for a long romp - they've been asking to go all weekend. It's been maybe 3 weeks since we were there - ? because the weekend weather has been not-so-good lately. But this was a perfect Sunday afternoon (the early part was, anyway) so we loaded them up, and Baby Bird came along for the walk too.

See the picture just above this? You're probably wondering why I took such a dumb picture, but if you look closely you'll see that the tree limb has a small knothole that appears to be an eye which gives the idea that this might be an elephant (according to Kelly) or maybe a toucan (my thought). One of those odd things courtesy of Mother Nature. What do you think? And the next picture, my only point there was to show that dandelions are making an appearance already. Ah, Spring!

A little later in the afternoon we decided to go on our first official ride of the year. When we left the neighborhood the sun was shining and it was still a glorious spring day. By the time we got home a couple of hours later - light rain and some thunder and lightning. Yuck. We were pretty damp by the time we pulled into the driveway. We hadn't planned on being out for that long but got side-tracked when we stopped at a friend's house for a quick (!) visit. They're in the process of moving out of suburbia, to the dad's house - an old home on several acres of land, sort of in the country, on top of a hill. It needs a lot of fixing up, and they need to clean out all the remaining stuff that Dad didn't take to his new place in a retirement community. The tractor's not theirs, it's just parked on the neighboring property - but the huge tires caught my eye. I know, I need to get a life.

More warm sunny days ahead, more adventures on the bike. Hooray!

Do You Know This Man?

I've been going through my family pictures and just started noticing something really strange. See the guy in these photos? He seems to be showing up at a lot of our family events, kind of like those crazy guys in the movie Wedding Crashers. Very odd. I gather he likes to eat and drink (shows up for the free beer, that's obvious). Doesn't seem to have much to say to anybody, in fact, as seen in this picture above, really only the dog pays attention to him. Beer and cake. This really is a weird guy. I guess he doesn't have many friends, so he resorts to crashing family parties?? What a sad, sad life he must have.

Then - check this out - I was going through the Christmas pictures from the past several years, and THERE HE IS AGAIN! Always kind of hovering in the background, hoping not to be noticed I guess. Who is this man? He seems to have a way of slipping into our houses, eats our food, drinks a few beers, and then he disappears.

I showed these pictures to a couple of my friends, told them this crazy story, and one of them said she thinks she's seen him wandering around Loveland - which isn't anywhere NEAR here, thank goodness - posing as - get THIS - a mailman! How insane is that?

Well, anyway, that's all I wanted to say this time around. Keep your eyes open - this guy may show up at your next family event, drink all your beer, eat your food, and leave without a trace. I'd hate to have that happen to any other innocent families as it has to ours.