This guy didn’t take any good pics of me, so I posted the WORST one of him, with glowing eyes and a sneer of contempt.

The party was fun, even if our Ringo turned into a goblin a little early.

Today, my adorable monster of a son decided to take a whiz on the couch. And I can’t clean it up properly, because… wait for it… the water’s out! I’m 10 seconds from meltdown.

For about four months now we have been subjected to frequent, long-lasting water outages. Since they are not planned for (evidently, as we were not given notice except for one time, back in June or July I think), the jackasses running the show are apparently not obligated to provide water to the people living here. They’ve dug up the roads, the yards, the sidewalks, made “mud pies (I guess washing this foul dirt around some with a firehose must be their idea of “cleanup”, thanks assholes) and generally annoyed the crap out of people up and down the street. I walk my kid to and from the bus stop through a construction zone. No choice. The bus stop itself has had a most unpleasant aroma of SHIT for the last 2 weeks, because they are working on a sewer line about 25 feet away.

Nice way to provide for soldiers and their loved ones, yeah? Thanks for nothing, I say. This is disgraceful.

Spent 7 minutes here, looked at 18 pages (in Firefox), and arrived without being referred.

So, who was it?

And what do you want for a prize? As long as it’s cheap and easily mailed… I can oblige.

Requests for locks of hair or frilly underpinnings will not be honored. I haven’t got the former, and I refuse to show the latter! ~_^

Thought I would finally put the hit counter up in the sidebar, since I am closing in on 20,000 hits.

Should I offer a prize for the 20,000th visitor? Is that the usual thing to do? What’s a good prize?

Lemme know…

Your result for The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test…

The Harlequin

Take The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test at HelloQuizzy

Thanks go to Wyatt for posting this one first.

One of the most flattering moments of my life-Wyatt put me in the list.

I feel it is my duty though to mention that the endowments pictured in the third photo were not standard issue. Now, while many of Sgt. Bones’ co-workers (my former co-workers, the jerks!) suggested that I had spent his re-enlistment bonus on those bazongas, and I received a shocked look and a spate of questions from a waitress at a local establishment I frequented (she also gave them a bit of a grab, that was memorable), I have to explain that while they weren’t standard, they also were not fake in any way.

They were just temporary.

Sgt. Bones took that picture when our Ringo was about six or seven months old. I’d lost all the baby weight except those, which were still in fully functional mode. It was just a great balance for me, filling out shirts like never before, but able to squeeze into skinny jeans- I think it must have worked for me, because I seem to recall that I got pregnant with George about that time.

The boob fairy really never did visit, just the stork.

It’s no secret to anyone who has been suffering through my blog for a while that I adore the Halloween season. Lazy and I were married on Halloween, and I have a deep and passionate love for costumes, scary stuff, pumpkins and CANDY! I’ve already mentioned that we pre-ordered our costumes, and I am now eagerly awaiting the first time I get to wear mine- at a party on the 17th. Some of the other things I love about this season are the fresh, cool air, the dormancy of the lawn (or the “weed gallery” as I prefer to call it), the long nights, spiced cider and hot cocoa, warm blankets and buying presents!

Oh yes, presents! Lazybones’ anniversary gift shipped just yesterday, after some struggling- I purchased him a set of red Doc Martens, since I learned that they have returned to manufacturing selected styles in the UK recently. When they moved production to Asia they no longer held the same appeal for me. I have a similar feeling about American cars. However, since there are certain “vintage” Dr. Martens styles now made in England once more, I thought it was high time that Lazy had his very own (all mine are pretty old, pre-dating the 2003 change).

Speaking of Lazybones, On the first of October he was finally promoted. He made me do the ripping and re-velcroing of his rank, and I could not be more proud of him. In honor of this long overdue occasion, he shall henceforth be known in these pages as “Sergeant Bones”. Next on the agenda is the re-enlistment, around the end of the year, followed by us getting the fuck out of Italy. Thank goodness.

Did I remember to mention the kids’ costumes? Ringo will be a skeleton (I found him some cute glow in the dark skelly jammies) and George will be a beautiful little orange and black butterfly. There will be pictures, provided I have a functional camera by Halloween.

That’s about it for now. Just updating so everyone knows I am still here. Ciao.

I hope this resolves the weird issues I had with that last template.

People are writing to the Army Times in force lately over the new Army dress uniform.

Me and Lazybones, we have a good laugh about the complaints. Not the stuff that has some basis (such as certain comfort issues with the badges, etc.) but the rampant griping over the loss of the “traditional” green dress uniform.

Ahem? Hello? These are E-7s, retired E-8s and many other folks who have obviously spent more than five minutes in the Army- so what the hell are they thinking?? The blues are traditional! The Continental Army wore… what? Blue uniforms you say? And the Union Army? Does the Civil War ring a bell for any of these folks? References made to “The Blue and the Grey” must confuse these poor souls- maybe they assume the Army sat that one out, and the fighting was all done by the Navy and Marines, as blue makes sense for them, being water-creatures. And the lighter blue trousers of the dress blues are because cavalry soldiers on the frontiers didn’t wear their coats all the time, but did wear their pants- therefore their pants faded from sun and wear long before their jackets.

A brief history is here. No official Army uniform was olive drab prior to 1902. The blue came first, it came from George Washington, and it came when the Army was just 4 years old.

That’s some tradition for ya, numbskulls.

I guess the outrage poured out in the Army Times only goes to show that just because you have been in the Army for-fuckin-ever doesn’t mean you understand a damn thing about it.

By the way, Lazybones knew the tradition, and could not be more pleased that the blues are becoming the new standard. Same for me. He looks pretty hot in his greens now, but once he gets into those blues, he’ll have a hard time staying clothed, if I have anything to say about it.

However we both have some pretty intense dislike for the ACU (Awfully Crappy Uniform) that was foisted upon soldiers just before I separated from active duty (in ‘05- they were issuing em in the weeks before I cleared, thank GOODNESS I was authorized my maternity BDUs still). Those things are just a nightmare.

The Flutterbye Garden

Why am I linking this?

Well, dear friends, because this story was written by my grandmother, for my sister and me, when we were little girls. Back when we used to run around the backyard giggling and I did things like wear ribbons in my hair. Yes, I used to have hair. Bald tattooed chicks usually start off as perfectly normal little girls, you know.

But anyway. I received the paper copy of this the other day and a wonderful letter explaining that the L.A. Times had published it and held a kids’ illustration contest to go with it.

And my little sister, she really did call them “flutterbyes”. We weren’t very good about playing nicely with one another but the story still made a ton of happy memories come back to me, of the beautifully groomed yard with the orange and lemon trees, the koi ponds, and yes- many, many flutterbyes.