so NOT cool anymore...

i love nature. my favorite way to begin the day is to sit quietly outdoors & watch the sun rise, giving thanks for another glorious day...i love to spend time on the water...time among our flowers & herbs...time watching the wildlife do its thing...but sometimes nature gets close...

a bit too close...

as in front door close!...last week this crazy lady (the size of my hand with fingers spread) set up housekeeping in our front entryway...she was promptly evicted!!! yesterday her friend, no doubt miffed at front-door visitor's swift 'removal,' laid a nice trap for me across our sliding glass door to the back deck. well now, hound patrol moves out sometimes before the light of dawn & this was one of those days. i generally follow them out the door to prevent unwanted 'neighborly' visits. coffee in hand, i was on the tail of the Elusive L. when something felt a bit...ehem...off! & then something was definitely a bit 'on' ~~ as in ON ME!!!!! our new arachnid neighbor (another one the size of my hand was ALL. OVER. ME!!!!!! her web was ALL. OVER. ME!!!!!

in a flash my coffee was all over her. D. was down the stairs with palpitations. boyworld was way-too-awake at an awful hour. most likely our entire neighborhood joined them in this pre-dawn unplanned rising! my screams could have won an oscar. now, i don't want to hurt living creatures, but i am sorry to say, this time i cared not one wit for that spider's well-being. 8 legs crawling on me in my house = serious lack-of-thought-thrashing-throwing-screaming reaction.

D. assured me she was back out the door & even down the deck stairs with a distinct coffee trail (he claims i probably drowned her in that stuff~~ what a waste of good coffee!). i don't know... but from now on, no home exits without light & a spider-removing stick! & now, back to my regularly scheduled summer relaxing...

newsflash!

big white dogs...& black wool clogs do not mix!!

because my mind is working in short bursts...

~~why so quiet here? one word: facebook. for those who don't know, think 25 years of catching up with 30 or so people. 'nuff said.


~~also spent last weekend on retreat at mepkin abbey. no phones, TV's, computers...not a great cell signal. pure bliss for my over-active mind.


~~thanks for the language advice regarding last week's post. this week boyworld has adopted a new technique for dodging italian responses to my italian questions...responding in english that is heavily encased in a scottish brogue! (maybe the possum *should* be in control!)~~speaking of small animals...that prognosticator known as punxsutawny phil was wrong! spring is on its way. my daffodils said so! (all you yanks up north, take heart...it's coming!)~~prayers answered (thank you so much!)...fr. reggie is slowly healing. he has a long road to travel but he has also come a very long way!!

shakespeare made interesting...

boyworld is up to its neck in thee's & thou's, currently reading Richard III & Antony & Cleopatra. they tell me they've had it with all the saucy prating & so i have found something to spice up the literature lessons a bit...mr. coffee klatch (aka scott) offers a plethora of shakespearan insults guaranteed to keep boyworld light of heart in trying literary times. get thee to scott's site for some fresh humor...

foreign language help...

if i write my italian lessons with a "fluent" pen, maybe i will be too! (ok, so i'm an optimist...)

i sure hope so....

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful. You show the world what culture really is.

Who's" Your Inner European?

thanks, cherrye, for the heads-up on this one!

a message from Little Man for all my friends in the South...

...who are experiencing a gas shortage...(yes folks, *this* was his tee shirt choice for today!)

crazy 8's...

don't you love today's date...8/8/8!?!

getting more than you bargained for...

some time ago, in those early days of our marriage when the purse was quite light, i discovered the beauty of shopping consignment. i prided myself on being able to do an entire wardrobe (not counting the unmentionables!) on a shoestring budget, often including designer duds & pieces that still had original tags at our local consignment store.


i would go home triumphant...an $80 retail pair of jeans marked $8 reduced to 50% off to make room for new arrivals...cost: $4! my momma would just shake her head...she was part of the "i don't want to wear others' discarded items" crowd. with 4 small children & grad school adventures, i really couldn't afford to clothe the 6 of us on retail in those years. i would just shrug at her comments. plus, i am a clothing hunter/gatherer of sort...i like the thrill of the hunt: that blouse with the just-right fit & color found at the right moment. now anyone can go to the department store & be assured that a certain blouse will be available in the season's colors & standard sizes. not so with consignment stores. which makes finding just what you wanted all the sweeter.


i have to have *something* to sweeten the shopping experience because.......here's the thing.....i don't really like to shop. i would much prefer if the wardrobe just showed up in my closet. but since we all know that won't happen, i do what i have to. now there is one thing (actually two) that will get me into the store & release my inner shopping self.....shoes (right, karina!) & purses! i do not honestly believe that i could have ever uttered these words in my adult life...i need a new pair of shoes or i need a new purse. i have never let it get to that! i do come by part of this honestly though...my daddy was a shoe designer back in the day & i from about age 12 on wore the industry sample size of 6.

lucky, lucky me!

daddy was forever taking stunning italian shoes & redesigning them for american companies. guess who was on the receiving end of the italian pair he used to work up the new design? yep, the same gal who was on the receiving end of the sample pair he used to pitch to the buyers ('cause you couldn't sell that pair!). if there was a special event happening or a new outfit in my wardrobe, daddy would often throw together a new pair just for me. heck, he did all the shoes for our wedding. when D. married me i had a shamefully huge number of shoes & boots...probably more than the number of articles of clothing i owned. around the time our babies started arriving, daddy had the contract for a major children's brand & my girls were in the same boat as their momma...all those shoes!!


along the way a chain of events sort of cured my shoe gluttony...my right foot was broken 3 times over the course of a few year, in the same place. the shape of my foot & its ability to wear sleek designer styles when out the door. and not long after, daddy retired. nowadays it is quite rare that i find a pair of shoes that work on my feet. but that doesn't mean that i won't try on many pairs, just in case! & these days if (i mean *if*) i wear a pair of heels, the air seems thinner up there!


now, about those purses! i have some crazy chick obsession with handbags. i will bypass every single thing in a store to drool over them for inordinate amounts of time. amazingly i do not have a closet-full of them though, only because of two reasons: the bargain shopper in me always wins & my criteria for a purse to purchase is so tight that few actually make the cut & go home. (D. is relieved about that!) the winning purse must have a classic look, have a zippered compartment for my wallet, have only one strap, & be in one of a few colors that i prefer. then it must pass the walk-around-the-store-for-awhile-on-my-shoulder test. now, of course i shop consignment for purses...so many choices & such good prices. the real find that floats my boat: a designer bag in classic design with a price tag that works for me!


sometimes, though, you get more than you bargain for. not too long ago i was looking for a purse in the brown/tan color range with a summery design to replace the older model that really was falling apart. i hit consignment paydirt with the perfect bag~~ a nine west medium brown in summer weave! all the criteria were met with the added beauty of a price tag of $6! it was all mine! on the way home i decided to do the switch-over in the car...but something wasn't quite right, something i had totally missed at the store...


as i made the purse my own with my things, i kept commenting about the odd odor. D. took a whiff & we both agreed that it had a peculiar odor that we had smelled at concerts, or maybe it was just the leather. hmmmmm. i took my things out & put them back in the winter purse, just to be safe. i started thinking...i had planned to use that handbag for some upcoming travel. would the airport drug-sniffing dogs notice? at home i roughed it up a bit...turned the lining inside out.


oh that smell!


it seemed more obvious. so i called my good buddy who just happened to be the chief of police in our town. he chuckled at my story but offered to show the purse to his K9 drug-sniffing partner. guess what?? the dog was not too happy about that purse.....it **had** contained an illegal substance very recently & had traces in it. my bad! no, he didn't cuff me or put me in the holding tank or set bail or anything quite so exciting. but he did ask, with a twinkle in his eye, if i wanted the purse back. oh heck no!!!!!! i said, honey you keep it for your D.A.R.E. program to warn all those teenage girl bargain hunter consignment shoppers....ADD THE SNIFF TEST to your consignment handbag purchase criteria!

when the sound of flowing water is not so soothing...

yesterday cherrye commented that she is not living in the house that is being built for her...wise move i say!


& sognatrice wanted to know if i have any words of wisdom for living among your remodeling...


oh yes i do.


move in with cherrye until it is over!


i could write a novel about this remodeling which was begun in the spring of 2005. the purpose of this tidy little project was to have a more secure home (think miami-dade hurricane standards) and to have space in the living room for more than 3 people & 1 dog at a time. just 2 years prior we had found our dream location, but we knew the size of the home would best be expanded. 6 of us plus 2 dogs & all the summer company we have come to love was not really happening in the original abode.


we have endured a hurricane ripping off 1/3 of the roof the week of ground-breaking...

(notice the ominous early ophelia clouds behind the house)

(Little Man practicing his on-camera meteorological skills...within a few hours our dock behind him was underwater & the place he was standing became part of the bay!)

an entire year of homeschooling all. four. children. with a house full of construction testosterone as background noise (use your imagination here!), wrong sizes/wrong colors/wrong placements/wrong installation of nearly every product imaginable, layers of construction dust deeper than the snows in vermont (maybe)
(old part of home...meet new part! they are getting along so well these days! notice the sheets of plastic in the immediate foreground...that was all the home fashion rage in early '06, don'tcha know!)


contractors showing up never/when they felt like it/4 hours late/4 days late/& even occasionally 4 months late.
(this is me, captured embarrassingly on camera by D. yes, i really was going crazy at that moment...& many, many others!)

***insert sanity mocha frappacino here...i am most likely responsible for any increase in starbucks stocks in the years 2005 & 2006! (for any coffee snobs reading this who aren't lucky enough to live in coastal NC...the choice is do it yourself in your own cucina or starbucks. no quaint little local caffe's back in the days of deep construction & many days, no cucina at casa piacere either)***

why has this project been taking so long...3 years from the start as of now? well that would also have something to do with my sanity. one year into the project, the contractors began to replace the existing floors in our now dining room, main hallway & 3 bedrooms. 2 weeks after the floor was laid, it began to buckle. eventually it had more waves in it than the atlantic ocean during a hurricane. we could not even open the bedroom doors. not kidding. after nearly 6 months of fighting with the contractor, the floor was ripped up & a new one installed properly. did i mention this was the week before Christmas '06?

when that last contractor walked out the door (after retrieving his left-behind hammer, right L??!?!!?), i closed it tight, locked it & told D. that my next stop was a mental institution if another construction dude walked through that door for at least a year. i did not care that we had many dangling threads. i had running water, indoor toilets, central heat, a stove, a frig...good enough for me! (consider that in the first two years of our married life, D. & i had a wood/coal stove as our sole source of heat...it doesn't take much to make me happy!) & so i took the entire year of '07 off...no hammering. no sawing. no sound of off-key men-singing. heaven!

what happened??? i got brave. i got tired of looking at the pile of tile waiting to be put down in the bathroom (yes, it sat in the bathroom for a year). i got tired of the purty pink counter top that was falling away from the wall.i got tired of worrying if one of our unsuspecting guests might fall through the floor when all he wanted to do was use the toilet!& most of all, i was tired of strips of wallpaper randomly peeling away from the wall-usually when company walked through the door. why would the wallpaper bother me so? well, not one person in this house could keep his or her hands off the stuff when it started to peel. until the paper was removed in its entirety today, my bathroom walls looked like captain hook had papered them! ARGGHHH!

oh. did i mention the art?? well, apparently there is a certain artist living amongst us who cannot, under any circumstances, tolerate a plain white wall. no sir! did i mention that said artist thought that a very large eye, one that would be picked up by the mirror for a--you guessed it-- mirror image! was her decor of choice for the old master bath. (thank God it was not the company bath!) just imagine stepping out of the shower in all your nekkid glory with a large pair of eyes staring you down.my poor mother-in-law had to endure this agony on a recent visit! bless her heart!

so here i am, once again coordinating contractors like a professional drill sergeant...enduring hours without water for plumbing work, enduring all the children invading, i mean using, our private master bath domain, enduring a moment of powerful gushing water noise followed by lots of "oh my goshes" only to find the plumber has flooded the bathroom, enduring the wetness of every. single. towel. in the house in the name of clean-up...all in the name of a finished (finally!) project. & right now, i am doing it with a sledge hammer & a smile!

(i put the sledge hammer & crow bar down long enough to pick up the camera & get an official men-at-work shot! with my help, D. & boyworld can strip a bathroom bare in 1.5 hours flat!)

signs & quotes...

top 5 signs that boyworld is well once again...

1. you come back inside the house to find an appliance box moving through your living room of its own volition


2. you lift the box to find...a dog!!


3. & then you hear snickering from a remote location


4. the dogs are glued to your pant legs for the rest of the afternoon


5. the quotes have begun again...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...another science edition!

"a 9 volt battery contains the same kinetic energy as a bowl of lucky charms."

ok...so the next time i am out of nine volts, boyworld must surrender the lucky charms!

Latin Lover

this one's for you karina...

Julius Caesar walks into a bar. "I'll have a martinus," he says.

The Bartender gives him a puzzled look and asks, "Don't you mean a 'martini'?"

"Look," Caesar retorts, "If I wanted a double, I'd have asked for it!"

a lavender martini at cypress...what is your flavor?...