My New Crush

Those who know me, usually have a fair idea of my biggest crushes throughout the years. I'm certain Ceci and a few others could name them. My earliest were boys/men like: Donny Osmond; that 1960's actor in musicals...Dot or perhaps Laura M would know his name..."The girl that I'll marry will have...to be..."; Dick Van Dyke (from the 1960 years, not of recent times), Vinnie Barbarino; Arthur Fonzarelli; George Michael (before I knew he was gay), etc.

More recently, I'd have to say that my current crush has been Steve Martin. However, poor Steve has been shoved aside in short order, by a man who is hot, smart, and funny albeit perhaps a bit too short. Two separate friends have sent me the link to his site to view this clip.

Fair warning: Its Political, and its a riot. And its exactly why I hate the "Rep. Hate Machine". Do they really think we don't remember their arguments and what they say? What's scary is that a large portion of this country is either too stupid or too ambivalent to care.

Introducing, my official new love:





ooops...I'm having technical difficulties...you can't hear my love over T's music. Sooo, here's the link to the site:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

My Little Drama Queen

I've mentioned before how T is a HUGE drama queen. She loves taking an emotion..happiness, sadness, madness, etc, and pretending to feel it to the nth degree. Here's an example of what she did tonight...

She's in her bedroom, clad in a princess dress of course, playing and watching TV. Suddenly I hear her making a noise...perhaps a cry, perhaps a groan of pain. It sounds like: Uhhh....Uhhhh.....Uhhhh....Uhhhh...over and over again. She comes running out, continuing the sound, and climbs up onto my lap, puts her head on my shoulder, and continues making the sound. One of my difficulties is sometimes trying to decipher whether or not she's faking. So, I start rubbing her back, saying "its OK,"... saying "Talk to mama, use words, use words Taylor, I can't help you unless I know whats wrong."

T picks her head up off my shoulder, gives me a VERY pathetic look, and says three words....


Cho-co-late chip cooookies


p.s. Dot's trip to Houston is cancelled due to Ike. I hope everyone says a prayer or sends good thoughts to all the people on the Texas coast. The Nat'l Weather Service has just forecast...for the first time ever... "Those who don't heed the order to evacuate who are in 1 or 2 storey homes, face certain death" for those who do not evacuate Galveston. That's really scary shit.

On the move...

Don't forget to check out the Families on the Move blogs. There are two separate families that have received their bundles of joy from T's same SWI, Maonan. One of my favorites is Bringing Emily MeiLynn home. Mom Vicki is a riot and keeps me highly amused.

Speaking of being on the move, listen to Dot's travel schedule in the coming months...its exhausting! Dot is scheduled to fly to Houston this Sunday...that is, if Ike doesn't cancel the trip. She then returns home for a few weeks, and on October 5th flies to Manila for about 3 weeks. She'll come home in November, and return to Manila in December. Boy oh boy will we miss her. Luckily, she'll be home for xmas. Since she's going to be gone for so long, we've scheduled a semi-impromptu trip to Disney. Our annual passes expire on Oct. 14, and we want to get one last trip out of them. Plus, I got a steal (relatively speaking) on the Coronado Springs room rate.

Here's the plan: We'll be driving up to Disney on Sunday, September 28 and driving back to Miami on Wednesday, October 1. T will probably lose her mind when she realizes that she'll be having lunch with the Pincesses in Epcot on one of the days. We're keeping mum on that, otherwise I'd never hear the end of it.

That's all the news for now.



P.S. Since we all seem to be getting older, I've been tinkering with the Font and have figured out a way to make it bigger, i.e. easier to read.

Shitty Day

Courtesy of Ike, its a pretty shitty day here today. Lots of wind and rain. Luckily, its the Tropical storm type that comes in s flash, pours almost horizontal, and is gone in about 5 - 10 minutes...only to return.

I'm off today. My followup with my gyno re the pain and fibroids revealed that there is no reason on earth for a 2 cm fibroid to cause this pain. The ER got it wrong. I'm off again today for another "pelvic sonogram".

All I can say is Thank god my friend Marie was with me in the ER, when they mentioned my having one for the first time. She's given birth to 2 babies, and clued me in as to what exactly was involved. For those of you in the dark as to what I'm referring, lets just say that a large white plastic wand and lots of gel is involved, which is inserted inside you. No, it does not vibrate. I asked :(. Marie's advice was just lay back and enjoy. Of course, that was difficult to do, given that I was lying on a gurney with some nurse and a strange male wielding the wand. Me, apparently not up on pelvic sonogram ettiquette, nearly fell out of the damn gurney when he asked, "Would you like to insert it yourself?" WHAT???? Uh, nooooo, was he out of his mind? I just had to laugh.

So, my gyno said that the pain could be a ruptured cyst "or something else". She never did define exactly what the "something else" could be, and I didn't ask. She said no need to go over what it could be, when its so easy to find out what it is. That sounded good to me. I figure that the alternatives to the cyst can't be good. So, I'm off to have another test, at a place that specializes in just pelvic sonograms. Apparently the test is only as good as the radiologist reading it, and the hacks at the ER apparently aren't that experienced in the girlie diagnosis's (how does one make that word plural?...diagnosices?) to be reliable. nice.

Anyway, that's my big day. At least I scored a day off.

UPDATE: They didn't find anything in this eval. either. They think that it was me ovulating. Huh? For four days? Who ovulates for four days? When I queried why I've never felt anything like that before.....their responese? Our bodies change over the years. OK, did they just call me old?

Here's a science lesson...apparently your egg is in some kind of cyst-like pouch, and it explodes out every month. Hence, ovulation. They think that's what I felt. So, I'll go back and consult my gyno with this result, and see if it could be some other thing or if she concurs that its nothing. While its frustrating that I feel that I didn't really get any answers today, I guess no answer is better than some of the alternative answers. I wish I'd just go through menopause, and get it all over already. With my luck, though, I'd start growing a mustache and beard.

As Roseanna Roseannadanna used to say, "It's always something".

Weekend Wrap Up

Well, this crazy weekend is finally over. While the adults were slightly crazed with the potential storm, T had a great time watching movies. Here, she's watching the movie Enchanted. Notice how she can't even take her eyes off the screen long enough to wave Hi to the camera. As is usual for any of these princess movies, T insists on full dress-up. That way, she matches the TV when the ballroom dancing starts. Although, how she managed to dance and spin in those non-matching shoes is beyond me.

Dot took her to gymnastics class on Sat while I was dealing with the window man. I swear, the only person on the face of this earth, who thinks T is as beautiful, smart, accomplished and otherwise perfect as me, is my sister. Sometimes, she's worse than me! She regaled me quite a few times with how much better T was than the other girls in the class. Gee, think she's biased? Dot is certain she'll be in the olympics in 2020...in gymnastics, swimming and diving. She'll strip that "hack" swimmer Phelps of his glory in short order, as she'll do it in 3 sports!

We took the opportunity this weekend to purge toys and books. Remember my vow of "One toy in, one topy out"? 4 garbage bags later, there's now lots of room in the designated toy boxes. Dot thinks this is perfect, with Xmas coming up. I've already banned her from purchasing some toys, such as the LiteBright. T is still too young and I don't want to spend the next year of my life picking up those stupid pegs.

Lastly, I've gotten alot of good ideas about what to do with the bread. Did I mention that Dot bought a loaf too? Since I think I have one of the smallest freezers known to man with my "counterdepth" fridge that I had to purchase b/c of my tiny kitchen, I've decided to give the stupid bread away...along with one of the jars of peanut butter that I never eat, insist on buying every hurricane scare, and end up chucking b/c its gross and expired. I think I'll hunt up some hobos who live under the overpass near my office, and give it to them. At least they'll appreciate it. Hopefully.

Anyway, hope you all had a great weekend.

Still Looking Good

Yep, its still looking good for us in So. Fla., thank god. Not so much for the rest of the region, as its a strong cat 4, and hitting areas that were just hit by Gustav. That's a true shame.

Meanwhile, we're having French Toast for Breakfast. Yummy.

Searching for recipes and a little religion

Can some of you religious-types assist? Isn't there a saying that the good Lord takes care of children, idiots and morons...or something like that? I think its from the bible. Not sure, though. Whatever the actual quote is, I'm certain that its quite applicable to my family at the moment. Ike is continuing to haunt all parts south of us. Me, an admitted non-religious-type, is busy saying a prayer of thanks. Why? Turns out that Felipe the window man would not have been able to install the new windows at my parents house in time for the storm. If the windows are not in stock, it may take a few WEEKS to order up the hurricane windows and get them installed. Unlike my sweet Aunt Connie who has kept both her sanity and her common sense as she's aged, it would take an act of god of Miracle-sized proportions to get my parents to come to my house during a storm. All I know is that I'm breathing a MAJOR sigh of relief.

I have to stop watching the weather channel. They're worse than channel 7. I've just watched a documentary on Hurricane Andrew and its destruction. Just what I needed to feel safe and secure.

Meanwhile, Anybody got some good recipes that use bread? A really good bread pudding recipe that includes liquor, or some other such dish? What the hell are we going to do with 4 loaves of bread??

Hurricane Preparedness

So, with Ike threatening us in South Florida, and appearing on a direct course to us all day on Friday, I started getting nervous and went on a hurricane-run to Target. Since all the stores were crowded, I figured I'd have better luck at Target.

Over $374.00 later, I'm stocked up. Here is just a portion of what I bought. The Key is to buy stuff that you may actually use during the year, so that if it doesn't come, you don't have alot of useless food. I think I may have overdone it with the bread. I got lots of gatorade and T snacks and batteries. I think I dropped over 100.00 on stupid batteries alone. Those "D" ones are expensive! Luckily, the batteries, too, will probably be used during the year. It seems that every toy invented these days has "batteries not included" written on the box.

Meanwhile, I also picked up some things that I had "been meaning" to purchase, but always put off. A couple new, clean, coolers, a few blow -up mattresses, another battery-operated radio, you get the picture.

One of the main reasons I was freaking out is b/c my parents have "been meaning to fix" a window in their florida room that doesn't close all the way. They've been happily air conditioning their back yard for the past 3 years. Every time I'm there, I mention it, but they keep forgetting to do anything about it. What's worse, there's no shutter on the window. Just old awning (beat up and rendered useless from Hurricane Wilma) that can't close anyway due to an a/c in the wall under it. Nice. Nothing like a cat 4 barrelling down on us, and they can't even close their damn window.

So, I have an appointment with Felipe, a window man, this morning at their house. I'm ordering up two new heavily-tinted hurricane windows to hopefully be installed this monday or tuesday. They'll also cart away the stupid awning.



This morning, I wake up to a much better Cone of Misery. Its moved!!!!! We'll watch it for the next few days for a shift, but its looking good for us. If nothing else, I guess we can thank Ike for the new windows.

The Cone of Misery is Back

...yep, right on schedule, we're once again the bull's eye in the most recent Cone of Misery produced by Hurricane Ike. This one appears to be a particularly strong one. Small and fast-moving, like Andrew was. Crap.

I'll be stocking up on provisions this weekend...just in case. Though it looks like it would hit to the north of us, one can never be sure. Andrew was supposed to directly hit us in north Dade, but at the last minute turned south instead, and clobbered Homestead and other parts south. You just never know. Good thing those Republicans are busy supposedly fundraising for Hurrican relief. Wonder if anybody will ever see it?

Whatever.

Say a prayer that it veres off to the north and then out to sea.

Weekend Update

Well, aside from the Golden Anniv Party for the Parents, we had a busy yet uneventful weekend. I officially have the schoolbus back, fixed up like its brand new. My investigation into the culprit has stalled with no progress.

T went to her 2nd gymnastics class and had a ball. I was thrilled b/c last time there were about 10 - 12 kids in the class with one teacher. That meant that they kids could only do the different routines 2 times. This time, there were 2 teachers, and they split the kids up between them. The each got to do the different moves 4 or 5 times, if not more. Much better!

Meanwhile, there is a group of older girls there, which I suspect are on a competition team, as they are ALWAYS there. You'd think that they lived there. One girl is Asian and looks to be about 15. As we left the gym, they were all outside at a table eating lunch. The Asian girl called over, "Hi, Taylor!". T momentarily froze upon realizing that her idols, the big tumbling girls were actually speaking to her and acknowledging her presence. The girl then says, "My name's Taylor, too". Oh.My.God. T was so excited to hear that, she couldn't stop talking about it. Over and over. "Mama, she's from China, too. Mama, she said Hi to me. Mama, her name's Taylor, too. Mama, she's pretty, too." Of course, whether in fact the girl is from China or not is debatable. However in T's world, anyone who is Asian, or slightly Asian-looking is "from my China", whether they actually are or not. Anyway, T's day was made.

Other than that, T has had a runny nose all weekend. I'm hoping she's not getting sick.

Lastly, we're all living with the usual stress in Florida, what with 3 hurricane/tropical storms brewing out in the Atlantic. The season is certainly upon us, but it no different from any other year....except that the Republicans are now using every hurricane/trop. storm/sun shower as another excuse to cancel keynote speeches from their lame "party leaders" at their convention and pretend like they "really care". Um, where were they last year when 3 actually hit Florida, nevermind the Katrina/Brownie fiasco. Bonus for them, they now have an "excuse" for Bush/Cheney not appearing. I think its amusing how they're trying to keep those two out of the limelight without admitting that's what they're doing. I really need to invest in a cheap black and white TV, so that I can actually throw something at the screen, without worrying I'm going to break it. The more I find out about this Palin woman, and her stand on various issues, the scarier this election becomes.

Ciao for now.