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The Living Without Series

This is a series of posts that I wrote back in 2006 on living with less stuff. Check them out: liv011Living #2liv031liv04

Coal Creek Farm on Facebook

The Chicken Doctor

April

The Architect

Clay

The Pretend Post

Close your eyes and let’s pretend that I have a blog…wait…open your eyes, you need to read.  Okay, pretend I have pictures in this post.  By posting this pretend post I might get the energy to take the photos and post them.  Maybe.  Don’t count on it.

This is a picture of the cute fabric I bought to recover the porch cushions.

And this is a picture of all the items I bought for ten bucks at the most amazing garage sale in the world.

Oh!  And this is a picture of my new bangs which I had cut maybe a week or so ago and ever since I’ve been wondering if I should cut my hair really short, just because, the hair, it’s long and boring and I’m fat, which has nothing to do with the hair except that whenever I’ve been on the chubby side I’ve had short hair and so I feel the hair, it should be short.

So…that’s about it.

Thanks for coming.  Oh, WAIT!  I have a story!

Many, many years ago when those Breath Right Strips first came on the market, Clay decided to give them a try.  You see he sometimes he snores, especially when he’s laying on his back.  So he tried them and they worked.  It was a miracle sent from Jesus and whatever adhesive manufacturer was involved.

One night as I struggled to get to sleep, Clay started back in on his snoring.  I couldn’t believe it since he had on his little nose strip.  I looked over to see that one flap of the strip had lost its grip from Clay’s nose.  So, there he was with one flap up, saluting me like a soldier.   Slowly, I tried to press the flap back down, while Clay continued to snore.  After a few failed attempts Clay woke up and swatted at my hand and mumbled some incoherent words that didn’t sound very loving.  Then he turned on his side and was back asleep before I could explain to him that he had one flap up.

In the morning he woke up with that stupid nose strip sticking straight up in the middle of his big nose, he looked at me, “Was I snoring last night?”  I glared at him and said, “Go look in the mirror.”

After the ten minutes it took for him to recover from how ridiculous he looked he asked if that was why I was messing with his nose.  Dork.

***fast forward to the present***

Clay hasn’t used the nose strips for years, but for some reason he decided that with his allergies bugging him he needed to get back on the nose strips.  I told him he wasn’t snoring, but whatever.

He’s been wearing the nose strips and they are making him snore louder than he’s ever snored in his life!  It’s like they’ve had some weird adversive effect.  And the weird part is that Clay is convinced they are helping him.

Clay- I think these things really help.

Me- With what?

Clay- With my snoring.

Me- But you were snoring with that thing on your nose all night.

Clay- But, it’s better since I have it on, right?

Me- You weren’t snoring before you started wearing them.

Clay- So it’s helping, right?

Me- I don’t think you’re getting it.  You’re snoring louder than ever now.

Clay- But, I think I’m sleeping better.

Me- Glad one of is.

Clay- I should keep wearing them.  Remember one flap up?  Remember that?

Me- How could I forget?

Clay- Those were the good days.

Me- I’m going to flush those things down the toilet.

Wine and Cheese

Xmas Truck-7\

Two years ago we moved to Coal Creek Farm.  Since we moved here our darling neighbor Ramone has passed away, but he left behind plenty of things to remind us of him.  This old truck is one of those things.  These pictures were taken by my good friend Mrs Mama.

I just came across them while browsing through my pictures the other day and had to share them with you because they made me smile.

Xmas Truck-23

Two years ago my two little boys had much chubbier cheeks than they do now.

Xmas Truck-3

This little thing is still my baby.  He has a thing about shoes, he like to wear them.  Those are his brother’s boots, but he insisted on wearing them that day.

Xmas Truck-18

This thing is still my sweet boy. Always willing to smile and have his picture taken.

Preacher is still my puppy, but he’s not that tiny anymore.

Xmas Truck-9

Here’s what happened when I took off the big yellow boots for a barefoot shot.

Xmas Truck-10

I didn’t think this was funny at the time.  I wanted to take that stubborn little boy and throw him to the cows and yell, “Here!  You raise him!”

Xmas Truck-11

I printed this out to frame it.  Never has a picture more aptly described the personalities of my two little boys.  Two years later, we have less fits but the same level of dramatic difference in personality.

Xmas Truck-12

Whine and Cheese.

crooked lady with oozing sores limps through parking lot

There’s this lady I know that was annoying her husband while he was trying to read a book and he’d finally had enough so he did some sort of wicked body slam that left her arm jammed up into her shoulder socket.  So, the lady, she went to the bathroom to get ready for bed with her sore shoulder and she did a little stretchy thing with her head and wrenched her neck.  So now, this lady is walking around with one shoulder lower than the other and she can’t move her head from side to side.  Guess she learned her lesson not to annoy her husband.

But, I have to feel sorry just a little bit for this lady because she has Poison Ivy or Poison Oak or whatever the heck kind of Poison Crap that causes big welts and puss to ooze out of the skin, she has that on both her arms and it’s not very pretty and really itchy.

Oh, and that lady also hurt her knee doing something.  She’s thinking it’s related to a treadmill that she’s been having a short-term relationship with, but she’s not positive.  So, occasionally, the lady, she limps a bit, cause the knee, it hurts.

And one more thing about that lady, her coffee maker died.  You should see her make coffee in the morning.  She heats up water, then sort of  strains and stirs it through an old metal filter thing. She can’t get more than one cup this way or it would take her all day and in her current state of crooked, oozing armness, she can’t handle holding her arm up for more than a few seconds to stir the grounds in the old metal filter thing.

Why doesn’t she just buy a new coffee maker you say?  I know, I asked the same question.

Apparently, coffee makers have gone up in price quite a bit in the past decade and the lady was so sticker shocked by the prices that she decided she would just make do and try to repair her old percolator, which she has a strong emotional attachment , especially since it garners comments like, “Wow, how old is that thing?”  and, ” My grandma had one of these!”

That lady had the nerve to go to that huge shopping store today to get groceries.  She brought all of her children with her because she can’t bend over or lift much with the whole Leaning Tower of Pisa thing going on in her upper body.  Her children made fun of her by imitating the way she had to shift her entire body to look from side to side in the GALL DARN isles, sort of like Sponge Bob acting like Frankenstein.  One of her children kept swaying his neck around like a bobble-headed disco-freak saying, “Look Mom!  Look over her!”  When he knew perfectly well there was no way in HELL she could  look at him.

I don’t know whether to laugh at this poor lady or put her out of her misery.  She’s causing so much cheap entertainment for her family and yet she can barely function.

When her daughter hopped behind the wheel to drive her home from the store she found herself so thankful that she forgot to be irritated at the child for still not knowing how to get home from a store that they visit twenty-million times a week.

I think tomorrow she might seek the kind of professional help in which a person lies face down on a table that’s shaped not unlike a coffin and is then put through twenty different maneuvers that make the bones sound like microwave popping corn, except with no buttery flavors wafting through the air.