Thursday, August 30, 2012

Electronic Family (Outside Flowers for the Wedding)

Larry and I ran over to Costco today to pick up some mums to decorate the grounds at Mary and Lance's wedding.  They were a good price and still tightly budded, so in in T -30 days, we can expect beautiful flowery mums!

Here's what we looked like at Costco....Yes, we had TWO flat carts!!!


 And then when we got home and took all the bags off ....



So I texted Shayne:

Me:  Here's what 20 mums look like:



Shayne:  Damn!!!



Me:  And here's what loading, unloading, unwrapping and watering 20 mums looks like:




Shayne:  HaHaHaHa!  Nice!

(And if anyone has any large flower pots that they'd like to donate we will be there for you!  We'll even pick them up!!!)

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Grey was Funny Even Back Then

When Auntie Audreys' rent got jacked up in 2009, she graciously offered to move back in with Larry and I.  Audrey reasoned that we would need help with the dogs etc., since Mary had just moved out.  

We said uh huh, sure.  

The day she moved back in, Mary and Lance were out of town, Shayne and Jess were on a little surprise anniversary trip (thanks Aunt Vivi!!) and with the two babies and Shayne's two beagles, not to mention Lucy and Ellie, and the five less than understanding cats, Larry thought he'd beat feet and head to Kentucky.  (Yes, he pulled the "visit my sick mom" card.)  So it was just the hounds and cats and babies and I when the U-Haul pulled in.

We helpfully watched from the window.

The following facebook conversation regarding the move still cracks me up.

And it is hard to find a cuter picture of my grandbabies.

(By the way, Audrey looked over the situation and immediately found another place to stay that weekend.  Did I mention that all four of the dogs were still working on housebreaking, and Neve was going thru her infamous barf on everything phase???)


the cutest little Stalkers ever!!!


September 15, 2009 

Baby Neve and big brother Grey watching Aunt Audrey.


One Month to the Wedding - OMG I NEED SHOES!!!


I love shoes.  

I adore shoes.

I am jealous of my daughters shoes and I "walk" vicariously thru them

I wear Crocs.  And Keds.  And sneakers.



I just got out of the habit of wearing heels.  I wore a pair of what I thought would be comfy heels to a tea with Larry and Audrey and Neve in April.  I staggered home and had to take a percocet.

For Mary and Lance's engagement party, I wore these beautiful off-white sensible heels that will go wonderfully with my mother of the bride dress.  I was on percocet for the rest of the weekend, heart-breakingly depleting my stash.

For Shayne and Josh's weddings, I bought a nice pair of Clarks clogs and suffered much verbal abuse from my daughters.  In fact, they came up missing when Mary announced her engagement.

Keds and white socks completed my ensemble for Mary's bridal shower.  I am not going to go into comments made upon the occasion, but they were voiced again when I repeated the outfit at Leah's wedding.

So today, I am going to wake Audrey up, and give her the comfy shoe catalogue that just came in, and tell her to find something appropriate that will go with a blush pink mother of the bride dress.

May God have mercy on my soles....'cause I am out of percocet!!

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

What a Difference 32 years Makes!

All of this planning and arranging and discussions about Mary and Lance's upcoming wedding has me thinking about the little homemade wedding that Larry and I had over 32 years ago.

Budget:  We had none.  It did not occur to any of our collective parents to offer to help out.  My mom didn't even attend.

Wedding Dress:  I had my sister's prom dress.  It was tan with little bunches of navy flowers. 

(This is an important note - my sister wore it BEFORE she was an official lesbian.)

On a more romantic note - I showed the dress to Larry right after we started dating and he said that he would find an occasion for me to wear it.   Awwwww....

Bridesmaids Dress: Charlotte had a pale blue long dress that her mom gave her.

Just before my dad gave me away.

Wedding Suit: Larry - He had an navy suit - Score!
Best Man's Suit: Russell - He ALSO had a navy blue suit - Double Score!!
Ring Bearer's Suit : Shayne - He too had a navy suit, left over from his career as popular "ring-bear-i-er".   SWEET!!!

(And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my dad chose a pale tan Western Leisure suit (with matching cowboy boots) as his Father of the Bride outfit.  And let's not forget the huge beard and wild-man hairdo he sported.  It made the lack of a "Father and Daughter Dance" MUCH easier to bear.)

Church:  I had overcharged a nice Episcopal priest one morning at McDonalds and we became friends.  He lent us his church, a beautiful old stone church.

Minister:  My friend couldn't perform the ceremony due to the fact that I , well, I had an impediment.  (English majors - any guesses as to what that means??  Think Jane Eyre...)  So he asked his friend the Bishop to marry us.

Yep, I made that cake!!
Rehearsal Dinner:  We took my dad and my brothers and a couple of Larry's brothers out to Duff's Smorgasbord about an hour before the wedding.  It was, after all, all you could eat shrimp night....

Invitations:  We called people.  Larry drove over to his parents house and let them know that they could come to the wedding.  Or not.  (We hadn't talked since Christmas.) 

Legalities:  It cost $7.50 for our license, and $12.50 for our blood tests.  Back then, you had to have a negative blood test report before you could apply for a license.  I think that it was to check for STD's, but it WAS Kentucky and it could've been to see if we were related.  All I know is that when that nurse came over with that big needle, I cheerfully, if not a little desperately, assured Larry that we could absolutely continue living in sin if it meant that I didn't have to deal with the business end of that needle.  The nurse called me a coward and jabbed away.

Flowers:  A Daisy on each guys lapel.  And for Larry's mom.  (We ran out of money after that - so no bouquet.)

Photographer:  Some teacher of Larry's that charged us $20.00 and gave us a small print of each picture and the negatives.

Wedding Cake:  I baked it.  And decorated it.  Larry wanted strawberry with cream cheese frosting.  It was pretty good!  We had Holly Hobbie figurines that Larrys' mom bought to top the cake.

Larry was an agriculture major...

I guess that this was supposed to be Shayne...



Reception:  Larry's mom wanted to make the best of our wedding, so she offered to host the reception at her house.  So we had punch, cake and butter mints.  There were no toasts, champagne or otherwise.  And no dancing.  You will recall that I was happy about that.

Check out Larry's Clark Kent/Superman glasses!!!

Honeymoon:  We didn't.  In fact, my dad and two brothers and their Brazilian exchange student were staying with us.  And Bo had borrowed a Simon game.  So all we heard all night on our wedding night was beepbeepbeep, beepbeepbleep DAMN.  Over and over again.  SO romantic!!



Scariest Moment:  When the Bishop asked if there was anyone who had any objections...We held our breath and hoped like hell that Larry's mom would not speak up.

Something must have clicked , tho'.

Here's hoping for 32 more years!!!!


Monday, August 20, 2012

When You Wish it was Just a Bad Dream

You know those mornings when you roll out of bed and stagger down the stairs and perhaps you watch a little too much of last night's episode of 16 and Pregnant with your daughter? Then you go upstairs and optimistically look in the mirror and say yeah, my hair looks ok - in fact, It looks fine!  You quickly throw some clothes on and run out the door and head off to work.  You look at yourself in the rearview mirror and tell yourself - the hair is ok.  It'll do.  Then you look down at the wide expanse of ahem hairy leg that shows over your short socks and realize in horror that you wore those short pants.  The black pants you thought you donated because they were too short, and yet so big that you spend all your time trying to keep them pulled up AND pulled down at the same time. At least your black T-shirt is -  OMG you grabbed the short black T-shirt too!!!  Then the sun comes out and you look at your hair in the rearview again and hope TO GOD that no one comes into your office this morning because you really should have washed that filthy mess atop your head.  You finally get to work and look down at your socks and reflect bitterly that you evidently do need to get to get stronger lights in your bedroom because those socks are blue and just looks so well with the rest of your black ensemble.  

At least your black sweater looks nice.

So you make your way into work looking like an aged goth princess and hide in your office  thinking that you just might make it thru the day without being seen and then it happens:

Your lovely, stylish boss says brightly "Let's go do lunch!  We'll go in my new JAG!!"

It's a great lunch - pants legs stayed down, pants waist stayed up, T-shirt stayed down and even tho' the temperature outside has risen to about 85 degrees you think you can still keep the sweater on because so far it is the nicest thing you've got going on.

Then you step into Chicos for just a minute.

The clothes there are so gorgeous.  The colors are so soft and cool.  And dainty.  And fresh.  
So you are standing there, feeling like you are one pair of fingerless gloves away from being a sweaty biker chick.  And then you realize that the purse that you borrowed from your daughter because you thought it would be "fun" has enough chains and rivets on it to outfit the rest of the biker gang.  And you understand why the salesgirls are watching you just a little bit too closely.


And you desperately wish that - just this once - you could actually wake up and realize that this was just a bad dream.


But no, you are unbearably awake and at this point all you can do is go back to the office, wait until it is finally 5pm, then thankfully go home and burn your outfit!!! 

Friday, August 17, 2012

Less Than TWO Months til the Wedding....


It is getting a little crazy around here....

Just a few things to do....

Thank you Auds for the art work!!

Our Garden

We spent about an hour one sunny afternoon planting zucchini and basil and squash seeds with the grandkids.  (They were all that I could find, having put the rest in a "safe" place.)

Then we patiently watched while the seeds sprouted.

We bought a cute wooden garden frame from Wegmans and put it on the place in the backyard where the ground dipped, then added 10 bags of potting soil.

Larry transplanted the seedlings along with a two tomato plants and a pepper plant that he bought.  It was a very warm day and as I watched from the air conditioning I was a little worried about him.  But he is made of sturdy Oklahoma farmer stock, so he was ok.

Larry also surrounded the garden with a tall white wire fence to discourage the bassets and the wild bunny that visits our backyard.

And Lord has that garden grown!!!  We can almost watch the tomato plants shoot up everyday!

We've had zucchini and pasta, stuffed zucchini, and zucchini bread.  Yummm....

So today I took the grandkids outside so that they could see what they had wrought.

They were less than impressed.  I said Look!!  We can pick a zucchini!!  Um, where did it go... Grey asked if perhaps the zucchini was in my imagination...

I finally found one, reached in and picked it and handed it to Neve, who promptly dropped it because she thought there was an ant on it.

Like I said, less than impressed.

So I came upstairs to take a picture of our crop with Neve - and ran into the age-old problem...

How do you take a picture of someone holding a vegetable with out it looking well, um...skeezy??

This is the 14th shot I took of Neve and the zucchini.  What do you think??

Oh wait a minute...that DOES look as inappropriate as I thought....

OK, Instead, here's a picture of Neve and the garden!!

Much more appropriate!!!
Anyone need any zucchini???



Conversations with the Grandkids

This morning I ran over to pick up Grey and Neve and Meg and Moo.  

On the way home I took the opportunity to talk with the kids about Mary's upcoming wedding.  I always start off with, OK, who are you guys going to walk towards? when Grey interrupted - 

It turns out that Grey has a few ideas of his own concerning this wedding....
                                        
On being The Ring Bearer:

 I think that instead of carrying the rings on a stupid pillow I should let my hero factory carry it.  I can slide the rings right on his arm, see?


See, you can slide the rings right past his guns...

On his Tuxedo:

I think that I am just going to wear my Wall-E vest. 

What does that look like?  I asked.

It has a picture of Wall.E on the front and the word Wall.E on the back.


My Wall.E vest is super cool.
On his Bow-tie:

I think I'll just wear my skull tie.  It is black and white - two of my favorite colors.  And it has skulls!

On His Shoes:

Ummm...I'm not sure yet.

So I had to ask - "What kind of pants are you planning to wear?"

Oh, Mimi, you'll just have to wait and see at the wedding....

Thursday, August 16, 2012

What NOT to Text to a Bride-to-Be....

We're keeping Mary's wedding dress at our house so that Lance can't see it.  On the day we brought the gown to Mary at the bridal salon for her fitting, I sent her the following text and picture:

Me:  Mental note ~ never leave Sminky alone with your wedding dress...

Sminky feeling like a princess...

Mary:  That doesn't look like my dress!!

Me:  Well, not anymore....

always a brides cat, never a bride...

Mary:  WHAT PART OF THE DRESS IS IT????

Me:  LOL!!

Mary: Thanks for trying to freak me out!!!!

Me:  Trying???


(For the record, Sminky was playing in some old curtains...)

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Getting Older Every Day

I got up early this morning and decided to take a few quiet minutes and look at the new crop of catalogs. 

The first one, one of Audrey's', had a pair of short cowboy boots to DIE for!  (If I survive this wedding, I am SO totally buying them.  In RED....)  And there were some cute tunics and sweaters. 

The next one of Audrey's catalogs featured tiny little clothes with lots of cut-outs.  Hmmm...not interested.


Then I got to the catalog with MY name on it.  It was called 'Easy Comforts' and the cover featured diabetic socks.  I'll be honest, I LIKE socks that don't leave rings around my ankles so I looked further.  There were salves and ointments and colorful canes.  Also featured were pill crushers and granny shoes and walkers and large bibs.  I thought to myself, Gosh I wonder when the kids will start buying this stuff for Larry and me.


Then I turned the page, and right there under the bladder control panties I saw it.


Something that I had only heard about in Sex and the City.


Something that made me blush.


Yep, it was the "rabbit".  (A personal (ahem) body massager.)

Ummm,,,Go Granny???