Rocky start

"You realize that once summer gets here we're going to have to get up at the crack of dawn to work on the yard, right?"

"Of course I do, Sam. Number one, we'll need to do any watering needed before it gets too hot so we don't boil the plants. Number two, we'll need to do the yard work before it gets so hot that we start to boil too. I have lived through Oklahoma summers before, you know."

"I'm well aware of that. It just occurs to me that if we're going to have to start getting up at six in the morning--"

"--we should start doing it now. Ah well, it'll give us a chance to have breakfast before we start working."

*    *    *    *    *

"Holly..."

"mmph."

"Honey bun, it's time to get up."

"nu-uh."

"Yes, it is. We're going to have breakfast before working in the yard, remember?"

"Pillows. Nest. Bed."

"Don't do that, baby girl. Hiding your head under the covers is not going to help. Now come on..."

"But--but--snuggles!"

"We can snuggle later. Now crawl out from under the covers. There we go."

"Sammy is a big meanie."

"Yes, yes I am."

*    *    *    *    *

"About done with your cereal and coffee?"

"I have a little more coffee left. Plus I'm trying to come up with a word in my game with Mom."

"Well, finish up. It's nearly 7:15, and I'll need to take a shower before work."

"Alright, alright. You act like it's my fault or something."

"Well, it did take me thirty minutes to get you out of--"

"--which is why we're starting this now, so I'm used to it when it becomes necessary."

"I suppose. Now, are you coming outside or not?"

"I'm a coming, I'm a coming, let me grab my jacket."

*    *    *    *    *

"Wow, it's cold out here."

"Too cold, Sammy?"

"Weeeeellllllll, I can almost see my breath."

"Then can we go back inside? Now?"

"Yeah, let's go back inside. At least I managed to get you up this morning."

"Pillows! Bed! Nest!"

A little pick-me-up

It's cold and all of my joints are letting me know it (not to mention my three cats and the snow falling outside).

But I came across this this morning, and it immediately brightened my day. It's from Not the Messiah, which is the oratorio version of Life of Brian.

Enjoy!

Coffee is my friend...

I swear there have been mornings where my cats are doing this:

Courtesy of icanhascheezeburger.com

This morning may or may not have been one of them.

I know it is no where near morning--in fact, it's nearly 2 in the afternoon. I also know I haven't posted since Friday.

There is an explanation for this, which I will share later this afternoon/maybe tomorrow. It is a sad tale full of misery and woe.

(So you can mentally prepare yourself, you know.)

But, I have a roast in the oven and bread rising on the counter. The snow is melting(!), and Sam and I will finally get to go walking again tonight. So things are good.

And now that I have this awkward randomness out of my system, maybe I'll go back to posting things for ya'll.

How was the trip?

*bat* *bat* *bat* *bat*

Opening one eye, I see Nala's nose a mere inches from mine. With a sigh I reach up and scratch her ears, then close my eye and try to go back to sleep.

*bat* *bat* *bat* *bat*

Nala's decided I've been lazy enough for one morning, it's nine o'clock, and by golly she's going to bat at my face until I get up and get dressed.

For a brief moment I consider opening a Chinese restaurant, but decide she's too cute and I love her.

After stumbling out of my bed to brush my teeth and get dressed, I proceed to continue stumbling to the coffee pot before sitting in front of the computer.

I wonder what everyone's up to today? I think to myself as I open up Facebook.

Oh look, the local university has closed down for the third day in a row. They never did that while I was in school there. Kids these days... Hey, my friend posted pics of her wedding dress! She's so pretty. I hope I can make it down to Houston for the big day... Wow, I wish I was going back to London soon, lucky dog...

Having caught up on all the little updates that Facebook provides, I then move over to my blog reading, starting with people I actually know.

will's kid is so gosh darn cute. Makes me want a little one of my own. Literary Cat has posted new list of books for me to check out, awesome! Ah man, she's got a cold too. Can't blame Sam for this one--he hid away while Rapier Wit was in town. Aww, thanks Sherri! I now know exactly how much snow fell 'round these parts...


*   *   *   *   *


You may be wondering why I just posted a snippet of my morning routine--it's setup for this fascinating op-ed over at Mashable about how social media is making us more like our grandparents' generation.

Here's the core of Josh Rose's argument:

Our grandparents talked with their parents. Family dinners were an essential part of life, not to mention ball games, religious discussions, family outings and just plain hanging out on the porch. But the culture of our parents’ generation became somewhat more escapist; James Dean, punk rock, The Outsiders, TV dinners, video games, and yes, even the Internet.

But, a good portion of our grandparents’ sensibilities are back today, thanks to social media.

Kids aren’t blocking their parents from their Facebook profiles — well, OK, some are, but not all of them. Teens are texting their parents about their comings and goings. And although it looks a whole lot different than the Cleavers’ family dinner, in a strange way the book is wider open today than it has been in 100 years. Because of blogging, tweeting, checking in and status updating, the lock is off the diary.

Additionally, emotions are more accepted. Pain more vocalized. I know someone on Facebook who is dealing with cancer and posts regularly about that for all her friends and family to see. We are rediscovering what we once knew inherently; community makes us less lonely.

And in many ways I see that reflected in my own life, as shown in the snippet up above. Even though I live in a completely different state from a large swath of my friends and family, I still know when people are going on trips, what the weather is like there, and how everyone's kids are doing in school. Having grown up in a small town, that doesn't seem very strange to me, as I typically knew that information about the people in the community. But I can see how it's easier now than it was when I was a kid, and I can also see why this is such a novelty for many people who did not grow up in a town of 10,000 people.

What do you guys think?

Mama, what's all that white stuff?

Apparently old man winter decided that by golly he was going to prove that yes, he is still around.

Last night about an hour or two before we decided to call it a night, we started hearing the freezing rain hitting the roof.

Then came the thunder snows.

Growing up, my Mama always told me that if it was thundering when you were receiving snow, then hold on to your hats, folks, you were getting at least a foot of snow.

When I got up this morning, there was a nice thick layer of snow on the ground, and while it was snowing, it wasn't very hard.

I grabbed my camera and took some shots, figuring that it was likely the end of the snowfall for the day.

Oh boy was I wrong about that!

We've gotten a few more inches of snow since then, and currently if I look out my front window I can just barely see the house across the street.  Supposedly it's going to start tapering off here in the next couple of hours, but I'm not going to hold my breath until I see it dissipating. After all, I think that's for the city. Weather underground indicates that my town will be receiving snow until 4 or so.

We'll see how it turns out.

(Yes, I'm skeptical when it comes to weather predictions, why do you ask?)

Sam decided to stay home and work out of the back office today, which was wise in my opinion. It's always a bit weird when Sam decides to work from home--it goes back to that whole quantity time thing.

That, and it's 9 degrees Fahrenheit outside and feels like -15. While my heater is doing an alright job, it's still bloody cold inside, and all I want to do is snuggle up with my Sammy.

My Papa always had this pearl of wisdom in regards to cold: "People say cold is better than hot, because you can always put on more clothes than you can take off. Thing is, unlike heat, cold hurts."

Just ask my hips and my knuckles.

The kitty cats have been fascinated with all of that white stuff falling out of the sky, even though I know for a fact that all three of them have been through snowstorms before. Then again, Nala and Techie are originally from Dallas, so perhaps it's a bit more novel for them.

Doesn't explain Tiger though--she was born in this part of the country, and lived up north for several years.

Water works

"Um, honey? I think we may have a leak in our front yard."

At Sam's declaration, I looked up from where I was reheating some potato soup for the two of us.

"What do you mean our front yard has a leak?" I asked, humorous visions of old Daffy Duck cartoons popping into my head.

Or maybe it was Donald Duck.

"Well, come take a look."

With a sigh I set the two bowls of steaming soup aside, already knowing that my day was about to become substantially more hectic.

Looking out of my front door, I could already see that there was a river of water flowing down our driveway. While not unheard of, in the past it was always proceeded by a goodly amount of rain, and we'd been dry (except for the non-stick snow storm earlier in the week).

"At first I thought maybe the car had sprung some kind of a leak this morning, because when I left there was a huge ice patch under the jeep. But that's obviously not the case," Sam said.

"Why didn't you mention it earlier?" I asked, watching my foot slowly sink in a particularly muddy patch next to the rock garden.

"To be honest it slipped my mind until I pulled back into the drive. I need to give our landlady a call," and suiting words to actions, Sam pulled out his cell phone.

I had to reheat the soup again before we had a chance to eat it.

*   *   *   *   *

"You've sprung a major leak--you can see the indicator on the meter spinning out of control. I can leave the water on if you'd like, but that'll result in an astronomical bill."

Unthinkingly I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to stave off the impending headache. Our landlady and the gentleman from the water department stared at me, waiting for my reply.

"Go ahead and turn it off. We can find somewhere else to stay if necessary," I decided. After all, one of the major reasons we'd moved back here was to be closer to friends and family. If this had happened when we'd been in the city... well, some things are better not contemplated.

While the water worker went to shut off the water, the landlady said, "I'll send my son and my carpenter out to track down the leak. We'll get this fixed for you as soon as possible."

"It's alright," I reassured her. "It's just one of those things that happen."

*   *   *   *   *

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how much we rely on indoor plumbing. Still, we'd managed to make it through one night without it, and my parents had come on down to keep us out of trouble for the weekend.

As my parents and I pulled back up to the house after lunch, we saw the landlady's son digging up a portion of the yard.

"Well, I found the leak," he told me as I walked up. "First spot I decided to check and there it was. Unfortunately, I cut your cable line."

"It's okay, we don't watch TV," I explained to him, looking down at the split cable sticking up out of yard.

"We'll be back out tomorrow to lay a new line for you. This old galvanized pipe... well, it's amazing it lasted as long as it did. We'll just go ahead and lay whole new PVC for you. You should have water back by tomorrow evening," he said.

"That'd be fantastic!" I told him, then left him and my father discussing how to lay the new pipe. It was pretty cold outside, and I was eager to go inside with my mother.

Mom asked me something about the weather, so I went to the computer to pull up the weather report.

Nothing. No response. Just 404.

With a look of dread I turned to the modem. Sure enough, looking back at me was a flashing red light.

He'd accidentally cut our DSL.

*   *   *   *   *

Mom and Dad had gone on home a couple of days earlier, and, indeed, they'd managed to get the water back on to the house by the end of the weekend. Sam had gotten up to go back to work, and I was trying to persuade myself that, yes, it was time to drag my lazy bones out of bed.

Sam sat down on the edge of the bed, lightly poking me until I rolled over and looked up at him with one cranky eye. "Yes?" I asked.

"Um, honey? You need to get up. We've sprung another leak in the front yard," Sam explained.

Suppressing the desire to start cursing, I proceeded to get up and dressed before heading outside to see the latest carnage.

This time the driveway was dry. However, the rock garden all along the side of the house had standing water, and right next to the hatch to underneath the house, we could see the water pouring out.

Sam called the landlady and explained what had happened before going and turning the water off himself.

*   *   *   *   *

Later we found out that when they hooked up the new line, apparently they'd left one of the pipes running back to the garage uncapped, which was what caused all of the leaking. By lunch that day they had everything fixed, water wise anyway.

The DSL... well, that took another week.

Week 12, Days 1-3

Week 12*, Day 1

So Sam and I brought this little rascal home Wednesday afternoon.




In my previous post, I ended with Sam heading to the city for a gig and J.J. and I were hanging out at home (with a brief, 10 minute visit from the pretty Sherri). Thankfully, J.J. was napping and I was researching how to raise a puppy. On his drive home, Sam gave me a call saying he was stopping at Wal-Mart to get a crate for J.J. to sleep in that night. Which was fantastic, because I was planning on suggest he do that very thing.We think the same way sometimes. It's quite frightening. That's right. The world should fear us.

Sam soon returned with a portable, collapsible kennel, like Suzy and Nick use for their dog, Toby. As soon as Sam set it up, Techie ran into it and declared it his new home, and woe unto the foolish mortal who tried to say otherwise.

I then pointed out Techie that he hates any kind of pet carrier. Techie explained I'd never got him a plush, comfy carrier; I'd always provided hard, plastic carriers that were scary to ride in. I then reminded Techie that he worships the ground I walk on. Techie was like, oh yeah, and decided to get out of the carrier.

(Speaking of the cats, Techie tolerates this new animal in their lives much better than Nala. The first night Techie went up and touched noses with the puppy and followed him at a distance. Nala took one look at the dog and ran under the bed until further notice, thank-you-very-much.)

Once we evicted Techie from the kennel, we persuaded J.J. to go in and go to sleep. Sam and I then followed suit.

*When we took J.J. to the vet, they wrote him down as being 12 weeks old. Based off of our research and observations, we think J.J. may be closer to 10 weeks, but for the purposes of this blog we will go with the "official" guess-timation. Also, I'm considering his first day with us as Day 1 of that week. FYI


Week 12, Day 2



About 5 o'clock in the morning, Sam and I awoke to J.J. yelping his little head off, and we figured the poor guy had to go out to the bathroom. Sam got out of bed and told me to go back to sleep, which I quite willingly did. I found out the next morning that sometime during the night, the collapsible kennel had collapsed in on top of J.J., and that as a result he'd soiled the kennel. Not a good start to the day.

First thing in the morning, we took J.J. out for his first pack walk. The trick is teaching him to walk on his leash so that he's walking either right beside or slightly behind us, and not pulling out ahead of us, as that would make him think he is Alpha over us. Being his first time on a leash, he did fairly well. Sam is pretty good at keeping the leash the right length. From what we've read and seen, when you're walking a dog you should have your arm hanging loose at your side so there's no tension, and have just enough slack in the leash for the dog to move about 6 inches in any direction before the leash pulls him.

We ended up having to drag J.J. a bit before he caught on to what was going on, and of course he kept getting distracted by anything and everything. Each time he'd start to stop or go after something different, Sam would make a "chhhkt" noise and tug the lease so J.J. would refocus on following us. It took us about 15 minutes to make it around the block, stopping at each corner and telling/showing J.J. how to sit and wait.

Once we got back, we fed J.J. and then took him immediately outside, as when a puppy is young, food he eats puts pressure on his colon and makes him have to go pretty much immediately. Unfortunately, Sam was feeling pretty horrid due to food poisoning from the Italian restaurant we stopped at the previous day, so he called in sick and went back to bed for about three hours.
During those three hours I was about ready to pull my hair out. It wasn't too bad at first, because J.J. just collapsed at my feet under the desk and slept for an hour. When he woke up, though, I petted him for a couple of minutes and then he squatted down and started to pee.

I immediately did the "chhhkt" noise and stopped him mid-pee, as I'd read that you have to catch dogs in the act for them to understand what they're doing wrong. If you wait until after they pee, and then rub their noses in it and say "bad dog," they learn that the mess is bad, but not that the act of making the mess is bad.

After telling him no, I took him outside so he could finish the job. We stayed out there for about 20-30 minutes and nothing happened, so I brought him back inside. Perhaps a grand total of five minutes passed before he peed, I mean, eliminated, inside of the house. Back outside we went. Another 20-30 minutes pass. Again. We go inside. Again. He eliminated inside of the house. Again.

Rinse. Lather. Repeat. About 2-3 more times.

By the time Sam got up again, I was becoming highly frustrated. Sam took him out for me, and I started doing some more research. Sam went around and started patching all of the holes in the fence, J.J. staying close to him the entire time. Before Sam had finished, I had a plan of attack, which I shared with Sam (he approved). We left J.J. in our newly fixed yard, and went to Walmart.

Once there, we returned the collapsible kennel that had tormented J.J. (ah, customer service, how I don't miss working in your field). We then went and bought J.J. a real, honest-to-goodness crate, a gate, a doggie bed, and some small rawhide rolls; the rawhide bones are too big for his mouth, unfortunately.

After suffering through Walmart's oh-so-fantastic check-out lanes (why, in the name of all that's good and holy, does it always take 20-30 minutes to check out, even when you use the self-check and/or 20-items-or-less aisles?), we came home and put up the dog-fence between the kitchen and laundry room. We set up the crate, put his bed inside of it, and J.J. fell in love. I think he could spend all day curled up in his bed chewing on his rawhide rolls.

Unfortunately, the laundry room is where we were keeping the litterbox, so we had to move it out into the front room for now. Nala had an accident in the bathroom because she couldn't find the litterbox, but once we showed her she was fine. (Hallelujah for accidents not happening on the carpet!)

As the day progressed, we got a better handle on what to do as far as housebreaking is concerned. After he woke up from a nap, and after he got finished eating, we'd take him out until he eliminated. When he did, while he was doing it, we'd tell him to "Do your business!" and then tell him what a good boy he was.

We also took him for his second pack walk. He did better this time around, though he was frightened by some of the dogs we passed by. Sam would gently tug the leash to take his attention away from the dogs when we passed them, and just stayed calm and confident. At one point Sam handed me the leash and marched our two neighbor dogs (little chihuahua terrors) back to their yard, and then we kept walking J.J. He seemed to be doing pretty okay.

That evening Sherri came over, and kept us and the puppy company for a couple of hours. He was doing much better by this point, and Techie and Nala would come up to the fence and look at the sleeping puppy. Once we put J.J. into his crate, Techie even hopped over the fence to say "hi!" to me and stare at the dog in the crate.

When we went to bed, the puppy started howling (a true-blue hound dog howl, too) because we'd left. Sounded almost like a tornado siren. Okay, not really, but it was high and annoying. Based off of what we'd been reading, we just ignored him and eventually he fell asleep.

Day 3



Sam got up every three hours or so during the night to let J.J. out to do his business. Unfortunately, Sam was unable to get to J.J. quickly enough to prevent accidents in his crate, but thankfully we had a couple of different bedding options, so we could be washing one while he was sleeping on the other.

That morning we decided that I would take J.J. on his pack walk by myself, as Sam had to get a few things done before he went to work. Unfortunately, I'm not as good at it as Sam--I was keeping too much tension in my arm, which was making J.J. nervous. But, we managed to get around the block, and when I remembered to relax, he walked pretty well right beside me.

I started doing a routine with J.J. Before he goes outside, I make him sit, praise him, then make sure to walk out the door before he does, and once I'm out side I tell him "Outside, J.J., outside!" and have him follow me. I then tell him to "Go do your business!" At the beginning of the day I had to do it while he was actually eliminating, but by the end of the day, whenever I'd tell him to "Go do your business!" he actually would. In fact, he made it through the entire day (and night!) without having a single accident.

After Sam had left for work and J.J. had had his breakfast, I left J.J. outside for a couple of hours so that I could get some housework done. I'd check on him by looking out the window from time to time, and aside from almost getting his head stuck in a folding chair, he had a fairly uneventful morning; and yes, I did go fold up the chair so it was no longer a hazard.

After I brought him back inside, we did some work on the "Sit" command, though it's difficult to do with just praise and no treats. Thankfully I managed to pick some up today, so starting tomorrow/Monday I'm going to really focus on training him on the "Sit," "Stay," and "Come" commands.

Thankfully, he was tired out enough from his eventful morning that he spent most of the afternoon napping. One of his favorite "sleepy" activities is to lay down in my lap and chew on his rawhide roll while I hold it in place for him. It's a good together activity.

That evening we went on another pack walk, and Sam had to distract him from a couple of dogs that were aggressive towards J.J. However, we controlled our impulse to comfort J.J., and after a few moments he seemed as good as new. Sam's parents came over later that evening to admire our new puppy, and J.J. was pretty well behaved for it.

While Sam was bidding his parents goodnight, I was sitting in the laundry room with J.J., who was curled up in his bed. My hand was draped across his back because I'd been petting him, when Techie nonchalantly walked up to the fence and jumped over it. Regal as a king on his throne, Techie sauntered up to me to be petted by my free hand, completely ignoring the puppy. J.J. made one move as though he wanted to chase after Techie, but a quick "Chhhkt!" stopped him. Techie took three more pats before slowly turning, looking J.J. in the eye, and hissing. Before I could do more than snicker, Techie had turned his back with grace and poise and then jumped back over the fence.

Have I mentioned how much I love and adore Techie? He's the best black cat familiar a witch could hope for!

Nala, meanwhile, still wants nothing to do with "That Thing" in the laundry room.

Also of note, J.J. did not have one single accident that entire day/night.


Thank you for mulling this over. If you haven't finished this, well, I don't blame you. Though I suppose, if you didn't finish it, you didn't read that last sentence. Hmmm.... Well, thank you to those of you who did participate in this meandering, wandering post. I'll try to be more coherent in the future. As it is, it's now 10:45 and I'm going to bed.

Until next time!


Puppies are nature's remedy for feeling unloved, plus numerous other ailments of life.
--Richard Allan Palm

Day Eight -- Co-Exist

Sunday mornings are always rough for me, namely because church in general is rough for me. I started going to my current church when Sam and I got engaged, and it's been a very different experience. Up to this point all of the churches I have consistently attended have been, well, small-town churches with no more than about 50-100 people in attendance. This is a much, much larger church (though no where close to being a mega-church, much less a Six-Flags Over Jesus). Which is great and all, but I feel overwhelmed by people every time I'm in there.

Also, I find myself having a hard time listening to the pastor there sometimes. It's not intentional, it's just invariably he'll tell us what chapter and verse(s) he's looking at for the day's sermon, and the next thing I know I've read about 5 other chapters in that book and he's two-thirds of the way through his sermon.

Books have always had a way of distracting me.

Anyway, on Sunday our Pastor was talking to us about the idea of unity and community in the church, which overall I thought was good. At one point, however, he began talking about how American culture as a whole is obsessed with the idea of unity or "oneness," and that in the process we lose truth. He then proceeded to talk about how he had seen this bumper sticker:

and that he had serious issues with the idea presented here. He continued to illustrate the point by talking about how he'd heard a "former President" speaking about why couldn't people of the various religions in the country set aside their differences when it comes to things like abortion and homosexuality and find points of unity. The Pastor disagreed with this because he felt we should "stick to our guns on these matters of truth. What's so great about the ideal of unity if we lose the truth?"

I completely understand, on an intellectual level, what his words were trying to communicate. However, the way he stated it, and the approving murmurs from the congregation set my hair on end. The tone wasn't one of "lets not compromise our values in an effort of trying to find 'unity' or 'acceptance' in the world, for while we are in the world we are not of the world." The feel of the words--and the emotions it sparked in the congregation--was of self-righteousness and arrogance, of hate and superiority. It actually made me grind my teeth.

Because to me, bumper stickers like the Peace sticker above or the better known Co-Exist sticker--


--is about promoting the over-riding tenet of love that these religions claim to profess. Are there sound, objective, Biblical and moral truths that we should live by? Absolutely! (For an excellent argument about this, I recommend C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.) But tell me what is wrong about recognizing the fact that we are all people, great or small, that we all have the same basic needs--physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual--and that nothing will change unless we can have intelligent discourse? The vibe I received (and it could totally have just been Holly in natural paranoia mode) was the unyielding anger of "we're right, no matter what anyone says, and we shouldn't have to listen to them or try to find out why they think and feel the way they do. We should just get rid of them all. Who needs'em? Damn queers," and so on and so forth....

Should we be willing to discuss our tenets and beliefs? Should be willing to tell someone that they're leading a life of sin and need the redemptive blood of Christ? Without a doubt. Does that give us the right to espouse violence and spew forth hatred and claim that we are "sticking to our guns" and "not diluting the truth"? In my opinion, no. Hate the sin, not the sinner. Show them love. Tell them of Christ and what He's done for us. Explain why our beliefs show their and our actions to be sin. And tell them that we love them any way. That we are here for them no matter what. Because that, that is what the Christ tells us every moment of every day.

I believe my feelings about talking to others about sin is best described with the following:

A good friend of mine at work told me the story of one of the last times she ever spanked her son. She couldn't even remember what it was that he had done that she felt the need to spank him, but it had completely infuriated her. After about twenty minutes of spanking him, he finally stood up, took the belt gently out of her hand, and told her that was enough, which simply enraged her more. Before she could do or say anything, however, he asked her: "Are you punishing me because you truly love me and need to discipline me, or because it makes you feel better?"

He then kissed her on the cheek, thanked her for loving him, and walked out of the bedroom. To this day she still hasn't decided why she spanked him that day.

So here's the thing about talking to people about sin and beliefs in regards to abortion, murder, usury, lying, sexual misconduct, whatever: are we talking to them about it because we love them and need to discipline/help them to learn and grow, or are we talking at them and using it as an excuse to hate them because it gives us a sense of superiority and makes us feel better?

The feeling I got from the people in the church yesterday was the latter.

It terrified me.


"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."
--John Wesley


(Please feel free to make comments and discuss as you will, or completely ignore it as you will. All I ask is that it stay cordial and in the spirit of love.)

Prologue ii -- Phone Adventures

There may be a few of you out there who do not realize that I am not a morning person. It is for your sake that I give the following warning: I am not a morning person. I am especially not a morning person at 4 am.

Why do I mention this? Because my day started today at, you guessed it, 4 am. This wasn't a planned awakening at 4 am--if it had been, I would have been merely pissy, rather than homicidal. (Before you fear for his life, yes, Sam is still alive. Not even his fault I was awake that early.)

What happened? Well, it actually all begins last night as I'm getting ready to go to bed. You see, yesterday my phone decided to go on the fritz--completely powered off at about 6 pm, even though I had charged it the night before. Ah well, sometimes it doesn't get a complete charge, I think to myself. With this in mind I decide to plug in the phone while Sam and I settle down for the night.

It is an unfortunate happenstance that the outlet in our bedroom is on Sam's side of the bed, and the power cable for my LG enV is just barely long enough to make it from the outlet to my nightstand. In the course of drifting off to sleep, I accidentally nudged my phone, and the tension on the cable pulled the phone down to the floor. With much grumbling I manage to retrieve it, and Sam sets the alarm on our actual clock in case I knock the phone off the bed again in the middle of the night.

Fast forward to 4 am. I wake up a little as I hear Sam move around the bed, just enough to identify that yes, Sam did get out of bed. With a mental shrug I roll over to go back to sleep. Only, there's one small problem: the side I rolled onto had no bed to catch me.

Down to the floor I go.

Wide awake now, I grumble and start to get up, only to notice that my phone has fallen off the nightstand during this transaction, and of course has been pulled underneathe the bed. I crawl around--in the dark with no glasses--trying to find my phone, and eventually determine that it has fallen between the bed and the wall.

Cursing, I decide to move the bed away from the wall so I can retrieve my phone. (Sam has [wisely] by this point retreated to the bathroom--which I believe was his original intention when he got out of bed in the first place--after I nearly bit off his head telling him that "I'm fine.") So I tug on the bed to move it, and succeed only in moving the mattress but not the box springs. Thoroughly irritated, I go to push the mattress back into place so I can grab the actual bed frame to shift it, and instead manage to roll the whole bed.

Over my toes.

At this juncture I start to invent new profanity. Finally I manage to move the bed and retrieve my phone, which is also the time when Sam makes it back into the bedroom. Having successfully got everything set back up, I drop back into bed to go back to sleep.

I awake to my alarm this morning, pull out my phone to tell it, yes, I am awake, and notice that, lo and behold, it only has one bar on the battery.

Le sigh.

I manage to make it until my lunch before my phone completely dies.

However, my wonderful husband decides it is in the best interest of humanity (and our sanity [or is it his safety?]) that we should go ahead and get my birthday present early: a brand new iPhone 3GS. :-D I am totally, utterly, absolutely, without a doubt completely psyched by this!

God sure knows how to make a bad thing good, doesn't He?



"We're just going to go home, go to bed, and play with our phones aren't we?"
"Nope. I'm going to go home and write in my blog. Then we'll go to bed and play with our new phones!"
--Sam and I driving home tonight