Scraps of Me …

This past Saturday hubby, the girl child and I went to the Herkimer County Fair.  Personally I’m not a big fair going.  Not much into rides.  The only thing that really appeals to me about fairs are the fried dough and Carmel apples.  LOL  But the girl child wanted to go and meet her friend.  Hubby and I had been sitting around the house all do being very unproductive so off we went.

Saw some cows, some pigs, ducks, chickens and truck pulling.  Ate fair food, spent an outrageous amount of money on lemonade and tickets for rides.  Watched people.  And went home.  It was several hours pretty well spent.  I don’t much get the truck pull though.  For those of you who are unenlightened it’s big 4-wheel drive trucks (some souped up and some not) who get hooked up to a 5000 lb tractor and pull it across a bunch of dirt.  There is lots of noise, both from the trucks and the crowds, and exhaust stink.  Yeah.  I don’t get it.  Maybe it’s a guy thing?  But no, there were plenty of women there.  I dunno.  I freely admit that some things are beyond me.

At this fair I saw something I had never seen before.  People selling grave stones.  Is there a more politically correct term I am not using?  Memorial stones? Grave markers?  Whatever.  It was strange.  There was a drawing you could enter too - to win $150.00 off your stone.  Have I missed this at other fairs?  Granted, when the kids were little we mostly went to church bazaars but I have been to a regular fair or two and I can’t remember seeing this before?

Anyway…

I purchased most of the books Paul and need for our classes on Amazon on Friday.  There is one I need that I can’t find used so I have to wait to get paid again so I can pony up $96.00.  Then Paul also needs to get some online thing for $50.00 for his math class.  I forgot how darned expenisive it is.  Both of our employers are paying the tuition but we have to pay fees and books.

The girl child and the middle boy start back to school on September 3rd.  Yippee!  Tomorrow hubby has to swing by the school to pick up the supply list so we can get them hooked up.  More $$$ out the window.  In addition to the $900.00 we had to put into Paul’s car.  Money, money, money…

Oh! Hey! Big flashes of lightning.  I’m off to get ready for work tomorrow and shut the computers down.

I got enrolled in English 111 and am looking forward to it. The required book is a book of essays called The Essay Collection.  Clever title huh?  I signed up for the course with the least amount of seats because I don’t want to be overwhelmed with having to respond to posts on the course message board.  From what my husband says participation is a part of the grade.  Most classes had 50 people in them.  This one had only 20.

Also enrolled in Intro to Criminal Justice - another small class - and the professor has not posted the book I need yet.

Math 090 was all full, at least the internet course was.  If I wanted I could go to the campus but well, thanks but no thanks. I’ll just wait for next semester.

Hopefully the Criminal Justice book is posted soon.  I need to get that in my budget.

August is a very tight month around here.  We camp and have to start getting back to school stuff.  I don’t even want to think about.  Yikes!

It’s Author Groupie time again.  With my favorite author Holly Lisle. Recently I purchased and read (okay, purchased and read in June, didn’t write about it until now) Harwkspar: A Novel of Korre.  Its set in the world of Korre, same as her novel Talyn (which I know I reviewed on this blog but can’t find - check my review on Amazon), but the book is able to stand alone.

Honestly, I was not impressed with this cover.  If it hadn’t been Holly’s work I would never have picked the book up.  It’s lackluster, dull.  Tor did not do her work justice with this cover art.  Actually Tor didn’t do much right with this book at all (more info on Holly’s blog).  Out of curiosity I looked up the artist who did the cover and he’s capable of much better work.  Such a shame.

The novel itself is amazing.  Classic Lisle with a return to the richly developed and many layered world of Korre.  Well fleshed out and believable characters and a killer story.  A young woman who was taken as a slave now lives among the Osselene Order, an order that gets their power from stone eyes created by a power hungry Prince.  Chosen from the ranks of the acolytes because of the strength of her secret Tonk magic the girl rises to power as an Oracle.  Her eyes are removed and replaced with Hawkspar stone - destroying her natural vision and giving her the ability to not only ’see’ but manipulate the rivers of time.

A young Tonk man named Arran is the best magical tracker of his kind, hunting slaves stolen from the Tonk and on a quest to find his sister who was taken years ago.

Hawkspar’s magic reaches out and Arran is the one who picks it up.

There are two distinct story lines with Hawkspar and Arran and Lisle weaves them together beautifully, like an intricate dance.  Point of view changes from 1st person (Hawkspar) to 3rd person (Arran) as the story progresses but it’s done well and does not interrupt the flow at all.  Evil is monstrous and seemingly insurmountable and the love between the two seems doomed.

Hawkspar knows she needs to sacrifice everything to save the world.  Arran can’t turn away from his quest to find his sister.

I was riveted and in no way, shape or form does this review do the book itself justice.  Looking for a deep read that you can escape into?  Hawkspar is for you!

My wonderful husband bought me a purple toothbrush.  An Oral B purple toothbrush.  Soft.  How amazingly romantic.

The other day he was a the store and he sent me a text, asking if I needed or wanted anything.  I asked him to pick me up a toothbrush.  The only ‘qualification’ I put on it was make sure it was ’soft’.  And that’s what I came home to.  He knows my favorite color is purple and I like Oral B (because of the color change thing that reminds you to get a new one) and he took the time to look to look not only for the brand I like but the color I love.  That makes me feel so loved.  And it’s so romantic.

As a young woman, before I had any experience with boys or men, I had a pretty defined idea of romance.  Thanks to the bodice-ripper romance I used to read.  Courtesy of Wikipedia a bodice-ripper is:

historical fiction tracking the monogamous relationship between a helpless heroines and the hero who rescued her, even if he had been the one to place her in danger. The covers of these novels tended to feature scantily clad women being grabbed by the hero, and caused the novels to be referred to as “bodice-rippers.” A Wall St. Journal article in 1980 referred to these bodice rippers as “publishing’s answer to the Big Mac: They are juicy, cheap, predictable, and devoured in stupefying quantities by legions of loyal fans.” The term bodice-ripper is now considered offensive to many in the romance industry.

I was quite obsessed with these books in the late 80’s.  The cover here on the left is what they used to look like.  Had a shiny foil sticker on them.  Ate the things like candy.  Anyhoo - they totally warped my idea of romance.  The big alpha male helping a helpless woman.  As a young woman I wanted someone to take care of things for me.  Most likely why I married my first husband at 19, he was controlling but I liked it.  My books had taught me that was love, that was romance.  Uh yeah, didn’t work out so well.  I grew up and at the young age of 24 or so I figured out that was not romance.

Honestly, I still didn’t know what romance was.  By that stage in my life it was someone who would take me away from the problems I was having.  Single mom, tight on money … I’m sure there are many who have been there.  It’s not a pretty place.  And I spent a few months where I went few quite a few men, trying to find one who would take me away and make it better.  Let me be free while he took care of stuff.  A bit different from my initial idea of romance.  But still not so good.

Enter Paul, who is now my wonderful husband.  I’ve told the story of meeting him before - how after our first ‘date’ I called him and told him it wouldn’t be a good idea because of the whole rebound thing.  But he came back.  And he listened.  And I learned what real romance was.

A few months after we started dating we were talking on the phone one night.  I told him my utility bills were huge and with the weather getting colder I wondered if one of those programmable thermostats would work.  I was just talking about my life and my thoughts.  The next weekend when he came to see me he had a programmable thermostat and he installed it.  At that moment I experienced real romance.  And I feel so deeply in love with the man that I never wanted to be apart from him.

Dear hubby is not the best with cards.  He forgot to get me cards for a few holidays I considered important.  He doesn’t buy me flowers as a general rule (only twice that I can remember) and he doesn’t plan dates.  He changes my windshield wipers without me having to ask.  When the floor is full of dog hair he vacuums.  Yesterday, before he went to work, he did the laundry and washed the dishes.  He makes me laugh.  Paul is my best friend and I can’t think of anything more wonderful than growing old with him.

Listening is what he does better than anything. Whatever I say to him, he hears. He may not always understand. He may not always agree. But he hears. And that has value beyond words.

The romance I live with on a daily basis - I’d never trade that for flowers and cards.

He’s perfect just the way he is.

Advertising on television, on the radio and in print is a fact of today’s life.  It surrounds us and it influences us.  No doubt about it.  Generally stuff I’ve learned about through advertising sits in the back of my mind until I’m in the grocery store.  I can’t think of very many things I’ve actually gone to purchase on purpose because of something I’ve seen or heard about it through an advertising company.  I’m contrary that way.

But there are two things that the advertising campaigns made me sit up, take notice and actually purposely go out to buy them.

The first is Raspberry Acai juice from Tropicana Pure.  First off these darn commercials are downright sexy.  How do they manage to make juice sexy?  It’s a colorful campaign too.  Richly colorful.  The verbal images are vivid and even though I had never heard of an Acai berry I just knew I needed to taste the way it combined with Raspberry.  Part of me is like - what the heck - and the other is like - lets go find us some juice!

I did find me some juice at WalMart, a small single serving so I could see if the commercial was anywhere near accurate.  It was indeed a beautifully rich color.  The stupid bottle is sexy.  It’s kind of separated when you first buy it so you have to shake it up.  And the taste?  Goodness.  Yes indeed.  It’s rich and it’s thick.  Not smoothie thick but not regular juice thin either.  You can feel it on your tounge as well as you can taste it.  And the taste is rich, sweet and quite heavenly.  Yummy right out of the bottle but I can see it mixed with say, some ice as a smoothie or dribbled over a serving of high quality vanilla ice cream.  Yeah.  Good stuff.  Too expensive for me to buy a large size and keep it in my fridge.  The kids would finish it in just a few minutes.  But it’s a delightful treat every now and again.  Stinking commercials.

The next is something that, heaven help me, I got because I was taken in by an infomercial of all things.  Our satellite was out and I was watching local television on a Sunday morning.  Not much on.  It was like infomercial palooza.  Mostly I was reading and ignoring what was on until I heard Melissa Gilbert talk.  As a kid I was a Little House on the Prairie fan so when I see her on TV I tend to stop and listen just to see what she has to say.  She does quite a few infomercials (is that where some child stars go to make money??) that I generally ignore.  But she was talking about hair and I’m kind of a freak about my hair (and my skin) and I was done with my book so I stopped to  listen.  *sigh*  Mistake.  They were talking about Wen haircare products, created by some hair guy in California.  Supposed to be this miracle stuff that cleans and conditions your hair without “lathering, harsh detergents and sodium laurel/laureth sulfates“.  Um, yeah, okay then.  Great before and after pictures.  This Chaz guy seems quite sincere.  After the infomercial I went right to the website - WEN by Chaz Dean.  Holy cow - that’s expensive stuff.  And a membership subscription too.  While I do spend more than your average bear on hair care (I love Bumble and Bumble which runs me over $25.00 a bottle each, for shampoo and conditioner) I don’t really want to get into membership things or get all of the stuff they included (which is why I never tried bareMinerals and instead found Jane Iredale make up … er … I’m kind of high maintenance) so I started researching online to see if I could find samples somewhere.  Couldn’t find samples but I did find quite a few good reviews.  You can buy the stuff at Amazon.com, where I got mine, QVC and at Chaz Dean’s online store.  I’m sure there are other places but I got tired of looking.

It came in the mail today - all the way from California.  I can’t wait to try it tomorrow.  Almost want to get in the shower tonight just to see if it does anything it says it’s supposed to do .  Supposedly “WEN® cleanses with astringent properties without lathering, while strengthening, adding sheen, luster, moisture and manageability to the hair. WEN® is invigorating and nourishing to both the hair and scalp. Color appears to be more vibrant and last longer“.  The little booklet that came with it says that if I use it properly I should only have to cleanse my hair once every 2-3 days.  That kind of skeeves me out but the main reason for that is because I’ve found that on day two my hair is limp, flat and conformed to my head.  No body.  My hair naturally is very fine and tends to get stringy and look oily even when clean.  Wholly annoying to be sure.  Especially for someone as neurotic as I am about my personal grooming.  But, we’ll see what happens.  My biggest fear is that I’ll work great and I’ll love it and then a few months or weeks later my hair will get ‘used to’ the product and it won’t work as well any more.  My freaky body tends to do that.  Get ‘used’ to something (like deodorant or shampoo) and then the stuff doesn’t work as well as it did when I first got it.

I’ll report back after a few days.

Does this post make it seem like I have time on my hands?

Community college.  To take a few courses and work towards an Associates in Cybersecurity.  Scares the bejusus out of me, I’ve been out of school for 18 years.  But work pays for it and it’d be foolish to not take advantage of that.

So I took the English placement exam and wrote an essay on how I’ve seen the adage “the apple does not fall far from the tree” play out in my life.  That was no problem.  The Math placement.  Yeah, well, I feel dumb.  LOL

Hubby is taking a math class starting in September so I’m hoping to take the same one - it’ll cut down on the cost of books.  And if I get placed inthe same English class we’ve already got the book.  Again, cutting down on cost.  Paul gets all of his stuff paid for by the military but I’ll only get tution.

The plan is to get my 2 year degree at this local community college, all online and then get my BS from Utica College of Syracuse.  Very well known school in the area of Economic Crime and Cybersecurity.  I don’t know, maybe I’ll work towards a Masters after that.

It’s good to have dreams.

I’ve been honest about my High School Musical guilty pleasure.  Today I found a trailer for the the third intallment of the Disney franchise.  And it looks great.  Can’t wait to drag my daughter to the theater with me.  Or maybe I’ll go to New Hampshire and drag one of my best friends with me.  She’ll love it too.

So this weekend I’ve been taking care of my brother and sister in-law’s pets.  It’s involved going over a few times a day to take the two dogs out to go potty and spending the night to feed the dogs and cats breakfast and dinner.  Not a problem.

Friday night was fine.  Paul went over with me, we took the dogs out and got them fed.  I spent some time visiting with them, lots of petting and talking.  Went to bed, slept like a log, woke up and took them out.  Fed them and went home for my son’s birthday get together.

Hubby stopped at the in-law’s house on the way to work and took the dogs out, made sure they had water and I went over around 5:30 to feed them and walk them.  Some more bonding time and about 10 minutes in the hot tub.  Off to bed I went.

I didn’t sleep too well because it got hot and humid but I slept.  Around 6 am or so the boy dog started to whine.  Because it was so early and I don’t get up that early on weekends I sort of ignored him for about half an hour.  Then I got up to take them out.  I took the girl dog out first.

A year ago August I hit a hole in my back yard and twisted my right ankle pretty badly.  To be honest it’s never been right.  So this morning I don’t even know what happened but I caught my foot on an uneven part of the blacktop and down I went.

In my night gown, in the rain.

Well shit, that hurt.  I was shaky like most people are after taking a big fall and hurting themselves.  Sat in the rain on my butt for a few minutes before I felt steady enough to get up.  Took the dog potty and went in the house to get the other dog.

Unhooked Shine from her least and hooked Shadow on his and all of a sudden I staggered.  I remember putting my hand on the wall and saying “What the hell!”  The next thing I remember is thinking, why is there wood under my face?  At first I didn’t even remember where I was or what I was doing.  I was laying in a position that I usually sleep in but I quickly realised what happened.

Passed the hell out.  I never did that before.  Can’t say its high on the list of things I want to do again.  You know?

So I sat up, leaned against the door.  Looked around.  It’s a miracle I didn’t smash my head on the corner of the dog food thing.  There is a wooden dog food/water holder in the kitchen.  Wonderfully sharp corners.  When I came to I was laying right next to it.

As I was sitting against the door Shadow came up to me, worried.  I was petting him, telling him is was alright and he threw up in my lap.  Seriously.  Thew up in my lap.

I started to feel nauseaous again, sweaty and shaking, so I lay back down on the floor.  Scooted myself away from the vomit and put my legs up against the cabinets.  And I starting thinking … my cell phone is in the living room, I don’t know if I can stand up and walk there.   My left knee has a huge, bloody abraision so I can’t crawl there.  So, I guess I’ll just lay on the floor until I feel like I can at least get to the phone.

Not sure how long I was there but eventually I was able to get up and limp into the living room.  I got my cell phone and went upstairs to the bathroom cause I really had to go.  While I was there I called Paul.  While up there I started to get all sweaty and shaky again.  I was going to lay on the floor but it was so hot and humid.  Went down the stairs on my butt and managed to get on the couch.

I did clean up the blood or the vomit because I couldn’t find a wash cloth anywhere.  When Paul got there he had number one son so he could take care of the dogs. Paul got me cleaned up and home.  I took a shower and went to bed for a few hours.  And now I’ve been parked on the couch since I woke up.  Paul went to work and stopped by the house to take the dogs out.  The in-laws are due back just after dinner.  I’ll call around 5:30 and if they are not there I’ll have number one son drive us over there so he can take them out and feed them.

Yeah, good times.  Good times.

A long awaited picture (well, long awaited by at least 2 people) of the new car.  I call her Fiona - she’s blue and tiny and I love her.  If I had known that gas prices would freeze as soon as I got a fuel efficent car I would have done this last year.  The price of gas has not changed since I picked Fiona up 2 weeks ago.  This is good, of course, but kind of ironic because the whole reason I got the car was because the price kept going up and up and up ….

Yes, I did pick up my car on Friday the 13th. And it’s wonderful! No, I don’t have a picture of it. All of my daylight hours since picking it up have been spent either at work or driving in said new car. It had 16 miles on it when I wrapped my greedy little fingers around the steering wheel. It’s now got somewhere close to 1000. Tonight I have to take the middle child to school for a function he’s working and I’ll take a picture with my cell phone then.

The girl child is at her father’s house until I don’t know when and she left The Tiz in my car. I can’t stop listening. Really, I should just take it out.  All the songs sound the same (except for the ones I skip) but they’re catchy.  What I really want to do now is call my mother and find out if she ever found herself listening to ‘my’ music when I wasn’t in the car…

Found a new show to occupy my time with, In Plain Sight on USA.  It’s pretty good though I wasn’t so sure for the first episode.  It follows two US Marshalls who work with the Witness Protection Program in Albuquerque, NM.  I never would have figured a show set in Albuquerque but hey, it works.

The new season of The Closer starts on July 14th and I’m hyped about that.  I’ve enjoyed this show since it premiered 3 seasons ago.  Clever, good mysteries and good interpersonal relationships.

Let’s see - we might as well continue the TV thing here.  Right now I am also enjoying The Next Food Network Star.  It’s about as close to reality TV as I’ll get to watching.

Lest you think all I do is watch TV - put your fears to rest.  I DVR most of them and watch them as I can.  Thank goodness for DVR.

Well, off to get something for dinner and then to bring the middle child to school.  I’ll try to get that picture.