Bless Your Heart

Tonight I saw a movie at a theatre for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten how crowded it can get! We saw Pride & Prejudice and it was just wonderful. I swear, Kiera Knightly couldn’t be any more gorgeous. The movie theatre is only 3 exits down on the highway from my house. I somehow got on going the wrong way and it took me a half hour to get home. Ooh, here’s a Christmas gift idea: GPS, or a compass at least!

My Dad was sort of normal on this trip. Normal for him anyway. Oh, the red sequin dress- he doesn’t know who’s it is. He said he grabbed the wrong suitcase. But it’s not his wife’s. Ok. See, he says a lot of stuff like that and you learn just to smile and nod because any further investigating and you’ll hear too much and your brain will explode because nothing makes sense. The tire was for my uncle. That’s fine. I’m not asking why my uncle needs just one tire. Lisa doesn’t understand the smile and nod technique. She wants to completely understand things. I get that. But when both she and my dad were in town last she learned quickly.

“Jon, you know when you’re driving into Georgia from Florida and just across the state line is that huge tree by the highway?”

Yep, yep sure do. Jon and I both nodded while Lisa looked on bewildered. We got back in the car and she accused us of not knowing about the tree. Of course not! If we slipped and said what tree? we’d still be there!

This trip we smiled and nodded at: *disclaimer* I love my Dad. It’s been a long, hard road. Too much for a blog post. We’ve had a rough, ROUGH, past but we’re trying to get over that so he can be a Grandpa. But some things you just have to laugh at or you’d just cry.

“That’s back when I was having some mental problems after my car wreck.”

“Wow, look at those leaves falling.” Well, it is fall.

“Yeah I told Marilyn (current wife) that up til now I’d just been practicing being married.” Nice. Esp considering you were married to MY MOTHER.

Jake was yelling in his direction “Gunpa! Gunpa!”, Dad looks at me “Who’s he talking to?”

During a conversation about Johnny Depp where Dad had just told us he’d seen just about all of JD’s movies cause JD is his favorite actor and I’d just asked if anyone knew when the next Pirates of the Caribbean was being released cause I just loved him in that role: “You know, I think Johnny Depp was in some movie about pirates.”

And my favorite:
“Well they’re trying to figure out if I’m disabled cause of being poisoned with mustard gas at that plant in Allendale with your uncle when we were working that government contract. We think that’s what caused my psoriasis. Or if it was from being in the Navy.”

Oh, and for you, today, a bonus. Click on the picture up there to enlarge and you’ll see the divots. The reason why my BIL exclaimed upon meeting my dad for the first time “That man looks like someone beat him in the head with a golf shoe!”. Yep, that’s what happens when a hair transplant goes horribly, horribly wrong. People, this man has been married 4 times. Not everyone can be this sexy.

We’re about to leave to go to visit with my dad at my sister’s for his last day in town. So I leave you with a post from Feb. 2004. Lisa has mentioned this story in a couple of comments lately so I thought I’d rerun it so I could humiliate myself for the enjoyment of any and all new viewers. Here goes…and click on the pictures…if you dare.

Lisa says I have more stories than anyone she knows. Well get ready to hear one now. I didn’t start this blog til August of 2001, and by then Jon and I had been married 5 months. So I haven’t documented all of our pre-marital escapades. I thought with Valentine’s day coming up it’s a perfect time to tell you all about how my newly engaged excitement almost got me banned from Target.

Jon proposed in August of 1999. Waaaay before we had a digital camera. A friend who lives in another state wanted to see my ring. So I took my regular camera and turned my left hand toward me and took a picture. I took the film to Target and went back a couple hours later to pick it up. I rifled through my pictures and couldn’t find the ring picture, or the index print. So I called the photo dude over and asked where it was. He checked my name and looked at me with squinty eyes and said “We don’t develop those kinds of pictures.” I was all confused. I said “You don’t develop pictures of jewelry?” Now he was confused. So he went to his Offensive Photo Drawer and pulled out my missing prints.

**Now is when I need to describe to you something you may not have given much thought to. With a traditional camera, the viewfinder is just a few millimeters off from the lens. So anything you take a picture of is just ever so slightly off from what you saw in the viewfinder. Especially close up shots. And you don’t know how the picture turns out until you pick them up from the developer. Back to the story.

Photo Dude lays my prints down on the counter. This is what I was going for (sort of- I had to recreate the scene for you since I don’t have the original pictures. Photo Dude wouldn’t let me have them):

But what I ended up with was what you get when your camera takes a picture of your short, chubby fingers instead of your ring: .
Our friends loved hearing about this later that night and one gave me the oh so glam nickname of Ass Hands. I had to hear about that one for quite a while!

My dad breeds dogs. Today we went with him to deliver 3 tiny daschund puppies to a pet store owner in Asheville, NC. This is a family run pet store and they only buy dogs from breeders, no puppy mills. Sara, Jake, and I piled into my dad’s truck with the 3 puppies, my dad and his bulldog Sally. The puppies were really sweet and loved hanging out with Jake on the way there and even took a little nap. While at the pet store we played with the other puppies for sale and I fell in love with these tiny tea cup chihuahuas. So teeny! I also played with a little shi tzu who was so sweet until he earned his name by leaving me a little smudge on my shirt. ew. So that was the normal part of my day.

It started by being barked awake by the pugs because my father had locked himself out of my house at the crack of dawn and was banging on the door. He had unloaded his beverly hillbilly truck in my driveway and needed to store some things in the garage for the day including: 4 suitcases, a red sequined dress, a tire, and some boots. So he asked me to hit the garage door button. I did and the door went up halfway then stopped with a nice screeching sound. He forgot to tell me he’d turned some lever from the other side of the door. Nice. I fiddled with that for a few minutes with his “help” until I could get the door all the way open so I could get my car out. Then I had to run and take a quick shower before picking up my mom to take her to a drop off point where she’d be picked up by a co-worker to go to an out of town conference. I show up to her house on time, but not so pretty, and a little freaked out about having to tell my husband that my father broke our garage door, only to find my mom in wet hair and a nightgown. Just then I get a call from my sister saying they are turning on to my street. Cheese and rice! I got my mom dropped off and got home to find the garage door “fixed” and everyone ready to go. Once I was satisfied that the door would open and shut and only after my dad told me “Yeah, I saved you by fixing this door!”- what? saved me? no, slick you saved yourself a big bill and an ass whooping- we got on the road. An hour or so into the trip and our father is bragging about how he gets discounts on camp sites since he’s totally disabled, a veteran, and completely handicapped. AND HE’S DRIVING. I drove home and I swear if my house had an open bar me and the bar keep would be best friends by now.

My dad is coming in to town tonight for a few days. He’s staying with us tonight. We haven’t been under the same roof overnight in over 17 years. Yep, Florida’s version of Disco Stew with his head divots, neck furters, googly eyes, head twitches and all will be here in less than 2 hours. He’s bringing 4 dogs AND I hear he’s got one of those scooters now on the count of his bad knees. He’s a love machine. People, if you want entertainment, if you like funny stories, if you want to pee yourself laughing, you need to come over right away. I promise to post pictures as soon as I can. I’ve taken the next 2 days off work to hang with the leader of the eccentric side of our family. Pray for me.

Saturday Morgan and I hopped in the car and drove to Atlanta so I could return my too wide roman shades I bought last month at IKEA. We ran into a marathon on the way there, and that slowed us up a bit. We made one gas stop (at the castle so Morgan could get her picture with a knight) and made it to Atlanta in good time. Then we got there and shopped and things were looking good. We left and got on the highway. About 30 minutes into the trip home I realized we were heading straight for Chattanooga- a charming city in a state where I do not live. I turned around and on the way back to the correct highway we stopped off at Starbucks. We got on the road and everything was fine. We made a gas/coke/bathroom stop an hour into the drive. About an hour later I started noticing that whatever town we were passing had eerily similar stores as Atlanta. Yep, I got on the highway going the wrong way. When I turned around I realized we were within 15 miles of IKEA. We’d now been traveling for almost 3 hours and had in essence driven 15 miles. Damn IKEA and its magnetic pull! Somewhere around Commerce, GA we made another quick stop and you guessed it, I somehow managed to go South again instead of North. But I caught myself after just a couple minutes. We left IKEA at 5pm. We got home at midnight. It’s normally a 3.5-4 hour drive. And guess what? My roman shades are 5 inches too short. Why? Why do you torture me so IKEA?

Ok so apparently I used a term not many of you have heard of in my last post. I shall explain the origins of pancake skin. We like to go to this place called Courtney’s for breakfast. We haven’t been in a long while due to budgeting, but we did treat ourselves this week. I’d forgotten how big the pancakes are. I’d ordered one granola pancake to go with my scrambled eggs. I buttered and syruped it up and ate out all the buttered syruped granola’d bits leaving the fluffing stuffing pancake meat on the plate. Then I was full. Jon takes care of whatever I can’t eat but he was less than thrilled to see I’d eaten all the good stuff (the skin) and left just the regular flavored meat behind. He ate it anyway, and he’d already eaten a full granola pancake of his own, so it’s not like he survives on my scraps or anything.
So, no, it’s not a SC thing. I think it’s just an early in the morning term when you can’t figure out what to call the good stuff brown part of the pancake vs. the plain pancake innards.

Reason #835 why I love my boy: He lets me eat the pancake skin with all the good granola bits then finishes off the rest for me.

Ike is a big daddy’s boy and loves to watch football with his dad. He wears his mini Vikings jersey and cuddles up on the sofa hoping to catch a stray chip or two. Ike hasn’t been to happy with the Vikings’ record lately, on or off the field. Hmmm, we may have to be on the lookout for a mini Carolina Panthers or Gamecocks jersey!

When I find something I like I must share. Sharing is caring right? First I want to sing the praises of Kodak Easy Share Gallery. For each holiday that I send out a pug card I shop around and find coupon codes and choose the cutest card for the best price. Price usually wins. This Halloween there wasn’t much to choose from that was cute or a new design. I ended up going with Kodak as I had a coupon code for 20% off and they had the cutest card. Well, time gets away from me. So it was Wednesday before Halloween before I even took the pugs’ pictures. We had our photo shoot around noon, I ran upstairs and uploaded the photos and ordered the cards. Lo and behold if my order wasn’t sitting outside my door the very next morning at 9:30am! Now, I did pay a couple dollars extra for quicker shipping, but I didn’t spring for the priority get it to me in 12 hours service! I couldn’t believe it. So Thursday I was able to address and send out all the cards and most of them made it to their destinations by Halloween and I still looked like I was all organized and prepared for the holidays! Speaking of, if you’d like a pug card sent to your home email me your address and I’ll put you on the list! The next card will be for Thanksgiving. I’ll be including an adoption update with the card. But the bottom line of this story is that Kodak rocks.
Secondly, but firstly in my heart AWWW!, I really appreciate all of you who read my blog. I started blogging in August 2001 as an easy way to journal. I never imagined the fun I would have or the people I’d meet or the friends I’d make. You guys rock. Thanks so much for leaving comments and sending emails and letting me know you’re out there.
Thirdly? Thirdly sounds weird, but I guess that’s the word. Back to picture taking. I want to share with you guys this link. Click here and sign up with dotphoto.com and you’ll get 100 free prints. I ordered mine last night so we’ll see how they turn out. I ordered 110 4×6 prints and 2 5×7 prints and with shipping it was only $5.88. Not a bad deal chickopees.
#4: Adoption news! It seems that CCAA – China Center for Adoption Affairs- is estimating that it will now take around 12 months from LID to travel. Meaning, we should have our dossier finished and sent off to China by February latest. It had been taking about 6-7 months for a referral from the time dossiers are logged in (LID). Then you travel 6-8 weeks after that. Well now it looks like we may not get to China until 2007. I was bummed at first but there’s nothing I can do. It’s totally out of my control so there’s no use whining and crying. I’d like to think that it may mean a better chance of us getting twins. I do know it means we have a few extra months to save money and get the house ready and throw wild parties and whatnot. It just seems like such a long time before our girls come home.
5: I didn’t want to end on a sad note. So here’s a Yo Mama joke: Yo mama so stupid she put a peep hole in a glass door.