No kidding - what group are you moderating? Good thing we don't have a moderator, eh?

Good idea, a bear, moose and blueberry wreath! Maybe I could collect some moose droppings ...Just kidding. Although apparently they do make novelty scultures out of moose droppings somewhere around here. Lovely idea, eh? Yes, I would like a wreath that could hang for a long time, but I'll have to buy it. If I tried to make it, I would probably spend more for the materials than buying one anyway (and heaven only knows what it would turn out like..)

It's a good thing DH still has a little tiny drop of responsibility left in him, because the washing machine broke yesterday. I am sure it is his fault: a couple of weeks ago, I asked him to push it back a few inches (it had worked its way out of place, and my back was hurting so I didn't want to do it). Apparently he took it by the control panel at the top, that sticks up above the rest of the machine, and just shoved. Naturally the entire top piece broke off -- DUH! And he said "he'd get to it sometime" -- it was still working, you just had to hold onto the top to turn the dial and push the buttons . So yesterday it stopped spinning and started to overheat. And this morning DH took it apart, fixed it and broke a hose. He's out getting a new one. It's difficult to be mad at someone who breaks your appliances and then fixes them although it's equally difficult to effuse with happy gratitude... I'd feel a lot better if he'd just say he was sorry when he did something stupid.

Enough griping. I spent almost all day yesterday helping DD with one of her scholarship applications. She is applying for several, but this one is for the Elks and it's a local scholarship that could get passed on to state and national. You wouldn't believe what they require -- it's way more demanding than most of the college applications! And the likely result is $1000/year grant, which is nice, but this is a lot of hoops to jump through to get it. They have to fill out a mess of forms, have the usual transcipts and financial info, a recommendation from someone who's not a teacher or a relative (a person from the "community"), an essay on an assigned topic, and several pages of "exhibits" of their accomplishments. And it all has to be neatly bound in a particular kind of folder. I've been cobbling together various newspaper articles, photos and certificates for the exhibits. Oy.

I know, that sounded like more griping. It's not really, I'd rather do stuff like that than go grocery shopping, which I'm going to have to give in and do today or we won't eat this week...

Yeah, you're right, it's all griping. Well, that's me.

Oh wait, more griping. He didn't even bother to fix the top piece of the washer. All he did was tighten a belt and break the hose. I give up.

Kiwi the pissed off

Oops, I missed your post, Schatzi! Glad you like the Zoup.

My stomach hurts from being p-o'ed. That's not good, is it?

Kiwi

having your gut hurt because you are po'ed is just proof that our digestive systems are very delicate----i get a lump and a headache when i am peeeved=====i remember dd writing all those essays for scholarships kiwonk=---you are right---it is very demanding ,esp when there are a hundred other things to attend to---this grade twelve year was VERY stressful as i recall!!!! lots of fun,but lots to do-----------how is cowpern's baby doing with the scholarship essays?????

Shatz-- Happy moderating! I need a reality check because I'm still wishing that bread was a vegetable.

Kiwi-- I'm glad DH repairs what he breaks (or rather, makes it usable). I used to try to put exH into EITHER a good category OR a bad one, and it often gave me a headache. What I learned a long time after he'd flown the proverbial coop is that he was BOTH good AND bad. And I learned to think about either the good or the bad (one category at a time) while always remembering that BOTH categories existed AND my sanity required that neither one be deleted.

My DS and his GF just adopted a 9 week old husky. I believe they paid a fortune at a pet store. I wish they'd asked me first. But he's really cute. (the puppy, I mean. DS isn't so bad, but not really "cute" any more. The puppy won't be "cute" when he grows into the predicted 80 pound body, either. Yikes)

Hope the Scholarship apps pan out. If she's interested in another set, let me know, there's a women's organization I can recommend to you... for outright scholarships OR loans, depending on which criteria she meets.

I'm sure lots of folks will be all busy posting during the week... but this is when I had the time.

Happy veggies and exercise!

Forgot. His name is Bailey.... after the color of Irish Cream.

Bailey is a beauty...hmmm what if we match up Jett with Bailey!!!! Grey puppies? spotted puppies.. how adorable...

Ok what party is everyone at? obviously not here... hmmm maybe January is a cow hibernation month.

Elcrappo... I gained 11 pounds since Thanksgiving! I redid my ticker to reflect how craptacular I am. Back to basics..

it is snowing out and it makes me feel like going for a nap---i think i will have some Chai Tea---has anyone tried it?? i am addicted to it---it tastes cinnaminnnyyyyy0-00----------- i LOVE it-----i want to make tea biscuits and eat four of them with jam----how's that for my diet--i had garlic bread and a strawberry salad for breakfast and lunch------------sleeeeeeeeeeeepyyyyy---cute doggie painty---doggies are sooooooooooo adorable looking but you must REALLY love them to do all the WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we left the three cats for two days and all was well when we returned---they didnt' even finish all the food!

i got rid of my boyfriend Kalan Porter--- i still love him but he turned twenty so now he's too old for me---i will keep looking.

Aren't they all? Today he spent the entire day so far taking apart and trying to fix the recliner section on the couch where he sits -- it finally collapsed yesterday. Well, actually it collapsed a few times and he whacked it back into place. I am such a bad person, it made me laugh every time I heard it collapse and DH . Anyway, he's removed the section and loaded it into the car to be fixed at the furniture store.

Bailey is awful cute! It always make me cringe when I hear of someone buying at a pet store, though, you never know what you've got.
I was going to do a conversion art pic with their two photos merged, but my computer says it doesn't have enough memory. Anyway my little girl is getting spayed the end of this month. I kind of hate to do it, but I said I would. I could have probably gotten her on a basis to show her if I had wanted (they have to be intact to show), but I knew I wouldn't end up showing her anyway. It's expensive and time-consuming. All the latest advice says that spaying early is good for the dog's long-term health anyway.

Yeah, stop bragging.. I am having to plan for a few days out of town at the end of this month. I'd forgotten what a pain it is when you have to board a dog...

We're getting a pile of snow today too. About 4+ inches so far and it keeps coming down.

Poor Kalan, dropped by a hot mama. Does that mean he's available?

Kiwi

(Tried to post this before and 3fc ate it and then exploded. LUCKILY I had just copied it because I had a premonition!)

I swear I'm not ignoring you cows! I just pull a blank when I sit down to write something. My stomach ain't doing all that well either. Heartburn and no appetite - something must be up, but no, I haven't decided to run away.

Kiwieeee - the washing machine sounds like our fridge. We dragged if from our old apartment and when dh was shoving it in its space here, he broke off the little thingie for the freezer part that needs to be pushed in or else it beeps because it thinks the freezer has been left open. Yes, German fridges are weird. So he put some kind of a metal part in it and used some horrible brown glue and the thing regularily falls off if you don't close the freezer door 'just so'. Gaahhhhhhhhhh! The back wall is all iced up too on the inside, so the fridge is probably on its way out and I'd just like to give it a little extra push. Wow, good luck on all that college stuff. More stressful for the parents than for the kids.

And the RoboVacuum is hilarious! I need to get me one of those.

Schatzi - ooh, a moderator- that'll keep you on your toes! My door's looking nekkid now too. I only remembered to take the wreath off yesterday. What kind of creation are you making?

Painty - Bailey is BEAUTIFUL. My parents had a husky for years when I was a kid/teenager and she was well loved. Hope the after-c treatment is going well.

Bazieeeee - yeah, a lump and a headache sound familiar. I looooooooove chai tea. It tastes so exotic when everything else around here is so normal.

My kitchen is just disgusting and I've decide to do something about it. Dh says if I throw away all the crap in there, I'll get a whole new kitchen. Because the old one is only 18 yrs old and literally falling apart.

I hope he doesn't mean what my DH means when he says that: that the kitchen will be like a new one when you throw away all the crap.

My washing machine feels your refrigerator's pain. I can't remember exactly when we got our fridge, but I think it might have been either right before or shortly after we moved into our house -- 19 years ago. The washer and dryer we bought with the house so they are older than that as well. We also purchased the crappy apartment size stove that came with the house and about 5 years ago upgraded to a cast-off from the in-laws, lord knows how old that is. But full sized! The broken couch/recliner is actually one of the "newer" items around here: about 13 years. Annoyingly, the frame and mechanism of the thing comes with a life-time warranty, so this is at least the third time we've made the store fix it. To be honest, I'm very frugal myself and don't care about having a lot of new stuff, but I really didn't picture living in a falling down house with old broken appliances and furniture, when I got married. I mean I have this shiny new puppy, she deserves better!

I'm making that hambone broth soup I made a year or 2 ago. Yum. Gotta go strain the broth (it's been simmering in the crockpot since midnight last night!) Remind me not to strain it down the drain.

Kiwi

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa---straining things down the drain!! didn't we talk about this one before!!! haaaaaaaaa i did it with the gravy at the aunt in law's once===she was unimpressed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!--it's like there is a piece missing in my brain lately!!!---------------

Things are always falling apart at our house. I blame it on bad house feng shuai (or however you spell it.) The front and back doors of our house line up so all the energy is constantly escaping. Which also explains why it's always a mess. I have no energy to clean it. The sump pump went out a couple weeks ago, but this is how prepared my DH is.... it had been raining like crazy around here and DH figured the pump was getting tired, so he put in a new pump before the old pump quit. We figured we'd keep the old one for a back up. 2 days later I was drinking coffee in the nice quiet house early in the am, only our house is never quiet, the sump pump has a house heartbeat sound. As soon as the heart beat sound quit, I checked and sure enough, the new pump had quit. I woke DH up (I'm sure that's his favorite way to be awaken) and he put the old pump back, then spent his day tracking down another replacement pump. You can only appreciate how amazing this story is if you've ever had to muck out 3 ft. of water in a basement. DH can drive me a little crazy w/ his preparedness, but the alternative would be worse. In fact, he already has all his vacation clothes pressed and packed and we aren't leaving for another week.

Sug - drawing a blank is fine - you could do worse and ramble like I tend to. I've forgotten my password for your blog too, but I read you almost daily.

Bagzie, heeee- Kalan too old---- Bagzie, we don't get shoplifted, but we did get one of our job trailers broken into last weekend - thieves made off w/ about $4000 worth of tools. Very frustrating. We have insurance, but we're still trying to decide if we want to make a claim. Contractors insurance is getting hard to find, so we're afraid of getting cancelled.

My puter has gotten a bug - somebody tell me how to get rid of it --- when I click on Internet Explorer to access the web, I get hi-jacked to a page that says www dot systemupdatepage dot com. Do not go there!!!!It's a spam page that is trying to sell internet security software. It also downloaded a program called spyware to my computer that I managed to delete. Anyway I hope it's deleted. It also added an icon to my toolbar that constantly popped up a message that I need to download their security software to my puter. I managed to figure out how to get rid of the icon, changing the toolbar options, but it's still on my puter - I couldn't delete it completely. I bet Kiwi would be able to fix it.

I love chai tea - yum.

That's it! That must be why my house is a wreck too! I always blamed it on the previous owners for replacing the big windows with small ones and not using enough screws in switchplates and outlets. I still think that could factor in.

Oh that sucks about the theft, that's a lot of tools! Did you get the police involved? There's very little crime in this area, but we are so lulled into complacency as a result, sometimes I get scared thinking about it.

About your spyware, what do you have on your puter for protection tools? I have Norton Antivirus, AdAware and Spybot on mine but DH's computer is the one that gets "attacked", probably because DD uses it to download strange stuff. He has Microsoft Antispyware loaded onto it; it's a free program and it's supposed to be very good. In the meantime, have you tried Add/Remove Programs? (Settings/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs) If you can figure out what the name of the program is that got downloaded, you might find it there and get rid of it. Another thing that I had to use yesterday to clean out remnants of software is called Windows Install Cleanup. I believe it's also free from Microsoft. I was loading my new version of Norton Antivirus and it kept failing because there was old Antivirus stuff hanging around and I ran that and it took care of it. I don't know if that would detect spyware stuff, but it might be worth a try.

Have you looked at Internet Options on your Internet Explorer? Be sure your home page setting (Tools/Internet Options/General-HomePage) doesn't have that spam URL in it. Also if it hijacked your default search engine, you can go into that same Options menu under Programs, and hit the Reset Web Settings button. That happened to me once--I hit the search button and instead of going to msn search it went to some bogus website.

It's raining on top of the snow today, which I think is just gross. I hope it doesn't become a soggy slushy mess. DD was going to take some of her friends x-c skiing after school today. She was relieved to finish that insane scholarship application yesterday. They'd better give her something for all that work.

Jet keeps staring at me.

OMG, Jet is so beautiful! Just look at her glossy coat.

Wabby - I was thinking the same thing about the start page. I've had weird sites change my page all of a sudden and I had to go into the settings and change it back.

Well, now I know why I've been feeling like a snail trying to walk up the escalator the wrong way. Blood test last week, thyroid level results this week. Lady behind the counter said everything was 'normal' but I made her give me a print out and saw that the levels are all out of whack. These people don't have a clue. Now I have to go to the lovely and talented doctor of nuclear medicine again and whine to her. And they only make you wait 7 weeks for an appt. Yay! But I suppose it's better to know that something's wrong with ya than feeling like this for no reason.

It sometimes freaks me out that a lot of unhappy stuff went on in our house before we bought it. I wonder if all that seeps into the walls? The previous owners divorced and the woman was left all alone with practically no money while her ex went off and got married again and bought fancy cars, and then 6 months after we moved in and she had moved to a really nice apartment and bought herself a fancy new kitchen, first decent one in her life, she died between Christmas and New Year's by falling down somewhere in her apartment and hitting her head. Ugh. Bad, bad karma, I tell ya.