$1 picture frames, DIY dreams, elderly cats and more

I spent an hour and 48 minutes on the cell phone with my mom Sunday, during which time I drove to Ross, shopped, and came home. She was my long-distance Ross buddy, and in the end, though we’d had a good talk, my hermit mother actually told me that I need some girl friends to hang out with. So, of course, I thought, I do have girlfriends, but we’re all so into our own things right now, that arranging a spontaneous Sunday afternoon shopping trip would probably end up more inconvenient than fun by the time we coordinated it.

“I always knew looking back on the tears would make me laugh.
But I never knew looking back on the laughs would make me cry.”

(Note: I pity you people who read this babble via some feed that doesn’t take advantage of the LJ cut tags. For your own sanity, close your eyes and begin scrolling toward the next entry now to avoid girly nonsense.)

Went up to the house of cheese, oh about a month or so ago, when Skittles was having a cheese craving. We took boys and did lunch, so it wasn’t nearly up to drunken cheese fun potential. Our picture is no longer on the wall, but that’s to be expected. Our lives have changed so much in the past year, which is also to be expected. Livejournal is about the only glue holding us together anymore, but that is better than nothing.

So, in a wave of nostalgia, and in honor of the four pretty bargain picture frames I found, I did a little “office area” redecorating by changing out and adding some new photos of family and friends. Among other things, I found a new home for my copy of the “five musketeers” family photo and restrained defacing the image of that brother. (I was surprised to open my favorite little photo album, a graduation present I remembered, to find the inscription that it was a gift from that brother.) I framed my favorite snapshot of Mom & Dad walking and holding hands from a Silver Dollar City trip a jillion years ago, and framed another favorite snapshot of me and Angle from our DC trip. It’s the one which led to the “Hey boy, you sure are fine!” quote. My old favorite Star Wars greeting card came out of the storage box and was added to my wedding/love/whatever area…. Han Solo and Princess Leia engaged in a kiss, with thought bubbles superimposed. She is thinking, “I’m the luckiest girl in the galaxy.” He is thinking, “She’s the luckiest girl in the galaxy.” I love it. All in all, I had tons of fun looking through photo albums, putting the frames together in little groupings around the place, and now am really looking forward to going to mom’s to go through her big photo drawer.

Despite mom insisting I needed to buy it, a purchase I resisted while at Ross was a set of bobble-head bride & groom picture frames… the face area of the bobble-heads was a picture frame area. What a wacky gift to send to Angela and Dennis, she said. I dunno.. it was a funny thought, but seriously… I think I might freak out at seeing my mug on a bobble-head bride.

I suppose the little photo rearranging mildly satisfied my latest DIY desires. James announced the other day that he’s been in a crafty mood lately, itching for a new model to put together or something, but I doubt he actually dreams about that stuff the way I do when I get crafty. I think for the past week I’ve been designing and decorating houses in my dreams, which is the result of too many hours with HGTV playing in the background (as it is even now.) Perhaps I’ll get to do a little redecorating at Mom’s soon to get all this out of my system. As for our place, why bother. For one, we’re renting, so why put up nicer light fixtures, why paint… why whatever. And, though I’m going nuts for some new furniture, how long before the cats have the new stuff as ragged looking as what we have right now. I was nearly freaked out last week by an apparently elderly and incontinent Samuel deciding to piss all over my cherished new bed set at the crack of dawn. Thankfully, though, the comforter survived a trip through the washing machine and managed to dry without totally lumping up and losing it’s shape, and hopefully with some new “Saumel goes outside at night” rules in place, it won’t happen again. All in all, it was just another reminder of how out of control this place is, so why bother trying to make it “nice.” I think I’ll just settle for “not disgustingly trashy” for the time being. Frankly, if you can walk in the front door and not be confronted by some strange odor, then I’ll be thrilled.

I have to say, I’m jealous of my Southern Cali niece and her recent IKEA shopping trip, even if it was necessary to replace the missing and damaged items that didn’t survive the free Navy relocation. Talked to her, too, this weekend, which was nice. Her beau completed his physical to prove he was healthy and able to be beaten and starved by the military this week, and that’s where he currently is: SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). She was going on about how she spent her first night solo in the comfort of their bed and couldn’t stop thinking about him spending the week in the desert with no water or shelter. He signed up for it, I told her. He’ll deal with it. Nobody says it will be fun, but he’ll survive, and it’ll make for some interesting stories later. I was suprised to find out that the age cutoff for that training is 29, and he’s 28 1/2. The doc told him folks over 25 rarely make it through, something about their bodies not being able to handle the abuse and recover. Wow. Who new 26 could be over the hill? I guess that makes me pre-historic. Jimmy, too, I guess, now that he hit the big three-zero last Friday, in a fairly uneventful day.

See what happens when I don’t update daily like I used to? Things are just too hectic from day to day. Work is piling up, with the end of this month being a very-not-so-pretty deadline. Thankfully, my dental experience went so well. Already, my mouth is feeling happy and healthy, and just the thought that I won’t have any more pain from those evil wisdom teeth just makes me want to do cartwheels (if I didn’t know better, having the evil memory of breaking my arm doing a cartwheel as a youngster. Damn treeroot.) One way or another, I don’t plan to be in town this weekend, whether the Cali work trip pans out or whether I just head to mom’s (Hazardfest, don’t ya know). Escape will be nice, and perhaps I’ll even be able to glimpse a bit of this while I’m away from the city lights.