I feel like a man!

Wednesday morning (yeah I know I'm world's suckiest blogger but get over it) Turtle was in the upstairs bathroom, the Hero was in his office and I was in our little computer nook right across from the bathroom. I hear Turtle in there doing his normal grunts and moans that are part of his bathroom routine ever since the marble incident of March 07. After the grunts cease he exclaims loudly "I feel like a man!". Flushes, washes and skips out the door on his tiptoes dancing to some tune in his head. The Hero steps out of his office seconds later to be overcome by the fragrance wafting from the bathroom. He says "Did he do that?" I reply, "Yes and apparently he feels like a man!" The Hero laughs and I relay what I overheard. He says "No wonder he feels like a man when he smells like that!"

Save those puppies!!!!!

Someone, anyone, save them!!! I'm just sick over a situation which I cannot talk about freely. I just ask for your good thoughts and prayers for the families that are being hurt by the madness of a Cruella da Ville. I have that sick to my gut feeling that if this goes on as it is that someone will end up paying the ultimate price for no reason other than to appease the egos of a few. I pray that it is not someone I know or love. Stop the madness!

Holiday Weekend Hangover

Victoria Day long weekend has come and gone. With it came our traditional garden frenzy! This year more frantic than years past due to the fact that the Hero has been so busy and gone on way too many trips. Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!! It's like the world of fire rescue has come out of hibernation and they all want a piece of my Hero. Poor guy is running ragged. So with this being one of the few weekends that I had his full attention we worked like mad to get plants bought, soil prepped, pots filled, grass mowed, trampoline set up, bikes out of storage, etc, etc..... the list goes on. We made a big dent in out todos and we are both suffering for it. Me and my 90 year old body and the Hero with his knees made old too soon thanks to the thoughtfulness of a drunk driver.

At the end of the day we did manage to dump our dirt covered bodies into chairs on our front porch, have an Alley Kat Aprikat Ale (my new favorite treat) and a Steam Whistle for the Hero and enjoy our hard work.

My fellow green thumbs may be curious about our plant selection so I will list it below.

Shade garden (containers):

Fibrous Begonia Gum Drop Cherry Blossom
Nonstop Bright Rose Tuberous Begonia
Nonstop Yellow Tuberous Begonia
Impatiens
Double Impatiens with German Ivy in hanging baskets
silver nettle vine
baby bunny bellys (Trandescantia)
Tricolor sweet potato vine
chartreuse ipomoea
silver falls dichondra
wandering jew purple trandescantia
lucky oxalis
dolce creme brulee heuchera
sunset velvet oxalis
chenille plant
variegated lysimachia
(viola hederacea) tasmanian violet

Perennials already in shade bed:

Bleeding heart
Heuchera Coral Bells
Day Lily
Hostas


Sun garden:
Rudbeckia Gloriosa Daisies
Sunflower Ring of Fire
Californian Poppy Apricot Chiffon
baby's breath (gypsophilia)
candy corn (manettia)vine
petit licorice (helichrysum petiolare)
argyranthemum
variegated potato vine
chives
garlic
mixed lettuce
basil
cilantro
canary creeper vine
miniature rose


We want to add some more perennials to our shade bed and we have bordered it with impatiens for the Hero's quick burst of instance gratification. (He has little patience for seeds) Still looking for another hanging basket for the porch, the NW side gets a bit more light than the front part of the porch. Tomato plants are still on my list to purchase and possibly some hanging baskets for the back if I get some hangers up.

It was a productive weekend. Add my first Iced Capp of the season and a family trip to DQ and it feels like summer is on it's way.

Soccer, the good, bad and the beautiful.

The Good

Soccer season has started up for the Hutch again. You may recall that our boys are soccer fanatics, particularly Kodiak. Iceman and Turtle play one night a week. Kodiak plays twice and practices once a week. La Diva opted out because there was not a team for her age range in our town and she wasn't up for playing with strangers in another town. She is in swimming instead and was on the High Jump team. She did very well at that for her first foray into the sport. She's obviously inherited my Mom's talents in that arena as she was a long jump and high jump champ in High School. We enjoy soccer, it's a great sport to watch.

The Bad

Unfortunately Kodiak's soccer season has been nothing short of a gong show. He was in such an awesome league last year but they are suffering from volunteer shortages and had to cut out the older age levels and run a smaller program this year. So we moved on to the next city... ugh... we should have headed west. From the get go this has been a disaster of an experience. The woman in charge of his age level pretty much bullied the coach and assistants into coaching... one of them being the Hero. He booked up his schedule with work after he was initially told he wasn't needed to coach. He has only been able to make one game so far and no practices. Hopefully that will change after this week is done. I have never in my life seen such a disorganized coach- last night was their 3rd game and he has still not organized lines or positions for the boys to play. So it is a gong show of boys running around without understanding of their position and bagging on each other for ever slip up. There are some kids with really great skills on the team that really want to play. Then there are a bunch of arrogant mouthpieces who don't listen to anyone, rag on every player while they don't contribute one positive thing to the team. They lip off the refs, ignore the coaches and do their own thing. They are the first to blame their teammates for their losses. (they've had 2 losses and 1 rain out so far this season). Last night by some miracle they managed to get 3 goals- the first was scored by our very own Kodiak. Their opponents rallied in the second half and outplayed the cocky twerps who got lazy and arrogant. Unfortunately Kodiak was in net for the 2nd half. He is not a goalie. He tries to be but it's not his strength. He is a killer defenceman and he does well as striker. He tried his best and was beating himself up when the other team managed to score twice on him and win the game. The thing is he had no defence to speak of. The hotshots who beat him down for losing the game for them did not make a goal, they huddled in a group of idiots to create a defence wall which only made it impossible for their goalie to see the play or have a clue where the ball was. They play dumb. I told him to cut himself some slack and that it takes a whole team to win and a whole team to lose. That they will continue to lose every game until they learn how to play their positions and work together as a team. Soccer is a sport of brains, skill and teamwork. They twerps who had the most criticism were ones that didn't score a goal, didn't aid in the scoring of the goals and defended nothing.

The kids that they beat up on are the ones that have the skills- some of them are small for their age, some are heavy but they know what they are doing. They are trying to listen to their disorganized coach whose practices are also a lesson in disorganized chaos with him abandoning drills half way through and letting the twerps jack around and not listen. In fact at the last practice one of these twerps was chasing another and grabbed me hard and almost threw me to the ground. They kept on like nothing had happened. I said very loudly "Excuse me" and then they turned and said "oh sorry!". Needless to say I'm still suffering from that incident. I feel like I should have bruises on my arms where he grabbed me but I have nothing but pain to show for it. BTW I was on the sidelines trying to catch parents with the picture forms that the coach failed to hand out the time before and pictures were later that afternoon.

So we are very disheartened by this soccer experience. I hope that they can improve it for the sake of Kodiak and his teammates that want to play. I'm not holding out much hope because these kids are a mess... I sat with the opposing team because if the kids are such pukes you can only imagine how pukey their parents must be. UGH! I didn't want to spend my evening biting my tongue in two listening to them.

The Beautiful

We are going to see Beckham tonight. The Galaxy is playing an exhibition game with the team from a nearby province. This will make my soccer angst all better. How can it not???.......

Grapefruit???

The Hero has been going to swimming days with Iceman's grade 1 class. They are sporadically scheduled once a month and strictly for fun. We were at Costco last month and they had swim trunks. The Hero's are faded so we decided to pick some up. The sign simply said Nike Swim Shorts and the price. We had orginally thought a medium would fit because the Hero has lost some lbs. The medium looked a bit small so we grabbed a large. He has packed them along to a couple of business trips but has been too busy to take advantage of the pool. Yesterday was the first day he had the opportunity to wear them. So he and another Dad are in charge of getting 25+ 6-7 year olds ready to swim. After they all head out to wait beside the pool the Dads get changed.

The Hero had a bit of a problem... he goes to pull them on and they are snug on his thighs, he is yanking at them and can only get them up far enough to still give him some serious crack action. Then he looks down at his junk and decides that no one needs to see that at the pool. He calls me to relay the story and says "it was like I had a grapefruit down there!!" Now that is some serious speedo action!! ROFL!!! He said the look on the other Dad's face was priceless as he is trying to yank on these tiny shorts. Everyone had a good laugh that he had brought his son's shorts by mistake. They naturally thought he had grabbed Kodiaks trunks. He wasn't about to correct them and admit that he'd bought them in the "boys department". It was an honest mistake on our part. He modeled them for me last night and it was a hilarious sight... but I will spare you pictures.....I'm not savvy enough to put cute little pictures over the nasty parts like Ree at Confessions of a Pioneer Wife. Kodiak has inherited a new pair of swim shorts, which fit him without problem. LOL... I don't know if I'll ever be able to keep a straight face when I see those things.

Hey Strangers...

Sorry for disappearing from the blogosphere and life in general for the last little while. I've not been feeling well at all and suffering from some major brain fog on top of it. I've resorted to some OTC muscle relaxants which turn me into Lucy in the Sky with diamonds. While my ramblings on that trip may have been very amusing I decided it was best if I spared my family and myself of any potential humiliation. I could have whined and moaned about my pain but I had recently written those Eeyore posts and that would have bit me in the butt big time. I've finally had 2 not so bad days and am down from the cloud for now.

I went to see a new doctor this week and will get some bloodwork done in the next while and then we will go from there to get our official diagnosis. She was a great listener and didn't make me feel like an insane hypochondriac like the last doctor did. She was respectful of my tendency to go alternative therapy before medicine. She took lots of notes and kept the notes I brought along. I left feeling that I'd been heard in regards to my torment. She was a bit hung up on my insomnia and had concerns of sleep apnea. The thought of a sleep study somewhere horrified me enough to hit the health food store in search of some Calme Forte (that many have recommended). They only had the kids version and I was not up for dissolving 20 pills under my tongue to get an adult dose. The lady kindly sent me to a little pharmacy that was known to be stocking lots of homeopathic stuff. The pharmacist/owner was incredibly helpful and even called me at home afterwards because she had forgotten to mention something. I've had 2 decent nights sleep taking this magic little pill called neurexan.