Friday, September 28, 2012

1 Day before the Wedding - At Lake Anna

It is the day before the wedding...need I say more?
The china is washed and here.

The silver is polished and here.

The linens are (finally) ironed and here.

All the milk glass vases are washed and here.

Mary's wedding dress is securely in my friend Sue's care and here

The mums are repotted and here.

The peanut butter pretzels, alas, aren't here.

Let's just call them what they really are.  

Poor man's Valium.....

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Electronic Family - 3 Days til the Wedding


Yesterday Mary called me - she's already at the lake - 

Mary: Mom, make sure that you don't forget my dress!

Me: I am all over it.  Audrey is running down to get it tonite.

Mary: What dress are you talking about?

Me:  Your dress for the rehearsal dinner that you left in Fairfax.

Mary: MOM!! I meant my WEDDING DRESS!!

Me:  Holy Crap!!  That isn't even on my radar!!

(OMG, I need to get more SLEEP!!!)

Sunday, September 23, 2012

6 Days til the Wedding - Getting Stuff Done

Yesterday was a productive day and today is looking to be just as busy!

Larry H. and Larry T. and Lance put on their big boy pants and cleared out brush and undergrowth at the lake house.  And smelled a burning pan in Grandma Edies kitchen before it was too late.  And butt dialed and butted TEXTED me several times!

Mary and Audrey got in touch with their inner ironing divas and brought out dueling irons and ironing boards out and ironed 200+ napkins!!!  Mary came in at about 2 to 1 to Audrey.  Of course the nap Audrey took in the middle of it all cut down her productivity just a bit...

I finished washing, drying, and buffing the last of the silver.  Then I went thru the linens and picked out the doilies and the runners etc and finished washing and drying all the tablecloths.

Our hairdresser was on the ball and called Mary around 8am..."What road is the lake house on??"  Mary said "Why?" Jennifer said,"well, I'm here!!".  Oops.  Evidently, Bonita, Lance's aunt told Jennifer that she would see her on Saturday....  Double Ooops.

Mary and I bundled up the baby cats and took them to see Dr, M.  We came out happier than we went in!  Yes, the babies are going to still take alot of work, but what they have isn't contagious to Humans or Basset Hounds!!!  AND Dr M. will board them while we are at the wedding!!  SCORE!!!

you'll notice the protective layer of chicken wire around the bottom of the crate...we allow no runaways!!!

Audrey pulled an all-nighter and did amazing collage-ing and paper crafts which I am sure she will blog about, so I'll leave that to her.

After all this silver polishing I officially have no nails left.  Sweet!  I'll save money and skip the manicure.

The stupid mums have nearly all bloomed.  You just can't trust a mum to look at the calendar.

The Nats won, the Hokies won and the Braves beat the Phillies!!  All in all a great sports day!!

So for today - 

Larry and Lance are off to the Nats game. 

Amy Haynes is coming by to practice Mary and Audreys' wedding make up.

Melanie and Victoria are coming by to help out.

We hope to - 

Finish the programs

Count the silver

Start the tablecloths

Perhaps pack the plates

Vacuum

And feed the kittens.

Wish us luck!!


Saturday, September 22, 2012

7 Days til the Wedding?? I Demand a Recount!!!

So this weekend we are going to iron tablecloths and napkins and do a final silver count.

Why, do you ask, did I wait so long to iron tablecloths?  Well, we were going to take them to the drycleaners, but she kept telling Larry that she couldn't give him an estimate until he could give her exact measurements.  So we finally measured them all and the dry cleaning lady said no problem, and consulting a list that she never said she had told Larry that it would cost between $15 and $25 per tablecloth!!!  So I have numerous half damp rolls of tablecloths residing in my fridge ready to be ironed. (We are doing this old school.  The starch and hot iron hits that cool damp linen and they just shine!!)

There isn't anything that smells better than freshly starched and ironed linens, so i am looking forward to the process!!

And did I mention that the baby kitties are back, and they are sicker than they were last week?
We have an appointment with our vet this morning and we plan to ask hard questions.  Especially after I spoke with the sweet little babies vet last night in Westminster.  I didn't know that they also have some sort of condition that is contagious to my other pets.  I have a bleach load going of all the clothes I wore yesterday while handling them and all the hand towels we used with them.)  Please think about us at 11:30.

Here is a shot of the peanut butter pretzel jar.  It would've been even lower, but someone moved the jar and I lost track of them.


Oh yeah, we have to pack the plates, too......

Audrey and My Favorite Stephen King Moment

As you may know, we had a little death at our house last week.  
It was such a sad moment, little Mini was really sweet.
It brought me back to 1994 when we lived in Texas.
I was on the phone with my next door neighbor and we were chatting about nothing, just passing a few minutes away before we had to buckle down and get supper started and homework done.
Right in the middle of our conversation, Audrey came in and asked where our Bible was.  I told her and she and her friend Jamie went running off.
A few minutes later, Audrey and Jamie came in and asked where the shovel was.  I told her and thought to myself - well, at last they are playing outside.
Then Audrey came in and asked - way too casually - Mom, where did you guys bury Lisa?  (Lisa was our recently deceased guinea pig).
All of a sudden it sunk in what Audrey was doing and I told Michelle, I've got to go!!  You see, Audrey had just watched Pet Sematary the night before.  As far as I knew, she was planning a Resurrection and I just couldn't deal with a half crazy guinea pig! 
So I divested her of the shovel and Bible and resolved to tell Larry to find a new place to bury Lisa

.
Lisa didn't need to come back.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

11 Days 'Til the Wedding - Getting a Little Stressed

On Sunday when we made our big trip to Costco, Lance picked up this big jar of peanut butter stuffed pretzels for the bar.

Perhaps he should have hidden it better.

It is too easy to grab one or two when we walk by.

And with 11 days left until the wedding....

Sminky in the middle of things....

I'll probably need to buy another jar.

Monday, September 17, 2012

12 Days 'til the Wedding

              The Week of Spending Dangerously...

It was quite a week! 

We

1)  Paid off the Florist

2)  Mary and Audrey and I tried out our wedding day hair-dos

Mary's hair won't look exactly like this...
3)  Paid off the Cake

4)  Bought stuff for the reception from Amazon.com

5)  Picked out and bought Grey's Tuxedo

6)  Found a new flower girls dress for Neve

You've got to love the flip-flops!!

7)  Allowed myself to go on Ebay to pick up a couple more cake forks and butter spreaders

8)  Scurried right off of Ebay when I found myself wanting to bid on entire sets of silver

9)  Rented a 12 passenger van for the bachelorette party

Mary and Audrey lovin' the fab '80's
10) Ordered a pair of shoes for the wedding (they didn't work out)

11) Bought more mums

The new mums.  They've promised NOT to bloom until the 28th!










Larry's mum farm. After agreeing NOT to bloom until the 28th, the Costco mums bloomed anyway
12) Fostered some tiny kittens for the weekend

They look SOOO small, but costs SOOO much!!
13) Got reservations for Lucy and Ellie for the wedding...we are only paying $9.00 a night more for our rooms!!!

There had better be room service!!!
AND

14) Went to Costco and bought some more stuff for the reception.

This plus another full cart is what $453.00 dollars at Costco looks like


 While we were at Costco and waiting in line, an older gentleman looked at Lance and said,
"Getting ready for the game?"  Lance said "Yep".  I looked at the guy and said, "He's getting ready for the BIG game - He's getting married in two weeks!"  The old guy looked at Lance and said "Whoa!  That's the biggest game there is!"

Lance and Mary - all suited up!

 A Big Game, indeed.






Tuesday, September 11, 2012

I'm SURE He Didn't Mean it Like He Said It

Sometimes it seems like men have problems saying what they mean.  Or maybe it is more that they DO say what they mean to say, but they don't realize that it doesn't come off like they want it to.

Here are some examples of men speaking rather badly.  And not even realizing it.

Like my little brother Bryan, for instance.  My sister-in-law Sarah, who was pregnant with their first baby, had spent a good part of the prior night at the Emergency Room. Later that day she was picking up around the house, when she picked up Bryan's little bar bells.  As she was putting them on top of the gun safe, Bryan ran in and said "Sarah!  What are you doing?? " Sarah immediately thought, "Oh no, the baby!" And Bryan stalked over, grabbed the bar bells off the top of the gun safe and said "You NEVER put metal on metal!!!"  

(In his defense, it was a new gun safe...)

Another time we were visiting them when the kids were little and I was telling Bryan how Josh saw me in the dressing room with a swim suit on and he said that I looked like a sumo wrestler.  Bryan gallantly said "you don't look like a sumo wrestler!!  Not professional weight anyway..."

(I debated smacking him upside his head, but remembering that Bryan will cheerfully tell you he is trained to kill you nine ways with just using his thumb, I figured that one day he'll have kids and I'll get my revenge then.)

And then there was the older couple we knew on the Eastern Shore right after we got married.  While she was going thru a long painful labor, he husband kept urging her to watch the Batman reruns that he was watching, because it would get her mind right off  labor.  And then during her c-section he looked at the incision and excitedly told her that she should really see this - who knew she had so much fat??  

(She always mused that it was a good thing that she was strapped down...)

All this brings me to my darling husband who was on some kind of roll a couple of weeks ago.  I was worried about what kind of shoes to wear for the wedding and Larry said comfortingly, "Oh Honey, you should just wear those cute keds and socks you wore to Leah's wedding!  You came out on that dance floor and everybody just knew that there was a grandma in the house." Uh, WHAT??  

(I immediately started looking at 3 inch heels and planning my speech to get pain pills.)

And the day we were at Costco getting the mums for Mary's wedding...   My hair was really curly that day and Larry looked down at me, patted my curls and said  "Your hair is so curly!  You look just like Robert Plant."  ROBERT PLANT??  That guy from Led Zeppelin??  The guy who did that snooze of an album with that country chick??  

( I immediately made plans to get my entire FACE waxed, invest in a flat-iron, and get Audrey to teach me how to use said flat-iron.)

Apparently, I look like a grandmotherly aging male rock star to my husband.

But hey, at least he loves me.

Robert Plant.  I just don't see it.

Buy this album only if you are having trouble sleeping....

Friday, September 7, 2012

Day 22 - Mary's Bachelorette Party Eve


My friend Sue and I like to go on road trips.

Our first road trip was when we lived on the Eastern Shore. We left our kids behind and went to Williamsburg.  Well, most of the kids - I was pregnant with Mary.  Mary has since then always tried to come along with Sue and me, sitting quietly in the back, listening to us talk.

Tomorrow we are going on an entirely different road trip with Mary - we are taking her and a group of lady friends to Baltimore for her Awesome 80's Bachelorette Party.  

We've rented a 12 passenger van and have been instructed that we (Sue and I) need to keep eyes front and to pay no attention to what drinking activities might be going on in the back of the van, sort of along the lines of "what happens in the back of the van stays in the back of the van".   Sue and I don't drink much, but we have both raised teen-aged boys who partied and are well versed in the 'don't ask questions that you really don't want the answers to' theory of child rearing, so we're good.

(We did remind the party girls that what (ahem) comes up in the back of the van gets cleaned up by the back of the van....)

(Please refer to the "raised teen-aged sons who partied" reference above.)

Mary made us a delightful map book for our various destinations, along with restaurant suggestions and the closest theater that is playing 'Hope Springs'.  

Sue and I talked last night and made up an unofficial agenda for the evening:

1)  I pick up Sue in Manassas.
2)  We drive to DC and pick up the party-ers at their hotel.
3)  We drop off said party-ers at the concert site.
4)  We have dinner at P.F. Changs.
5)  We have dessert (maybe take-out?) at the Cheesecake Factory.
6)  We go and see 'Hope Springs'. (We plan to admire Tommy Lee Jones and make comments re Meryl Streep's hair.)
7)  We pick up the party girls and deliver them back to the hotel.

We think we have a pretty good agenda.  Sue did bring up the fact that what with dinner and dessert and the movie, we may be late to pick up the girls.  I said I feel that if we are late maybe the girls will take some initiative and perhaps make some money whilst they are standing on the street corner...I mean, gas for the van doesn't pay for itself...

So I told Sue that I'm planning to pick her up at 5:00pm. Sue reminded me that maybe I should pick her up earlier since I've never driven a 12 passenger van before.  

Oh, I said.  I hadn't thought of that.

So tomorrow evening, if you see a white 12 passenger van driving in the fast lane on I-95 going 45 miles an hour with the right blinker on, just smile and wave!  

Sue will wave back...my fingers will be tightly white knuckling the steering wheel.

And the party girls will be all fabulously decked out in awesome 80's attire, hoping that we'll get to Baltimore before the concert is over.

Oh dear Lord.  Mary is getting married in 22 days!!!



Wednesday, September 5, 2012

24 Days til the Wedding - Momma's Little Helper

Here we are, 24 days til the wedding and we are in full on wedding mode!  And our little cat Sminky is right there along 'side us, supervising, making thoughtful comments, keeping us straight.


Don't forget, you offered me editorial control....

Not everybody knows this, but Sminky is actually Mary's cat.  When Mary was a manager at PetSmart, a guy brought in this little bitty 4 week old kitten and asked that they put her in the adoption section.  Mary explained that they couldn't, but SHE would keep her, and Sminky sat on her shoulder mewling the rest of her shift.  We bottle fed her for the next three weeks (I hadn't started working yet, so she was my day job.)  Since she had to be fed often, she went along with us if we went somewhere and became quite accustomed to people.  In fact, she thinks she's a person.

She feels like she's in charge of:

Milk Purity.

Are you sure this isn't a white Russian??

 Cleanliness of the house

Are you planning to clean this up anytime soon??

Computer Content.

This better not be porn....

And Crockpot Sanitation.

Looks like you missed a spot....

And now with Mary's wedding coming up, it seems like Sminky's work is never done -

Here she is helping count saucers and bread plates

One, two, trois, eleventytwelve...what???


Making sure that there is enough silver

You are slacking in the polishing department...Get busy!!

And checking out the quality of the linens.

I found a spot.  Get the bleach ready!!


It must be tiring, keeping track of everything that is going on with the wedding, plus making the time to keep the rest of the cats in line...

I need a vacation...

All she asks in return is that we treat her like the royalty that she obviously is.



I left my crown somewhere around here.....

And feed her lots of ham.

Electronic Family


I texted Audrey today:

Me: At Giant.  Need anything?

Audrey:  A $5k check.

Me:  They are out.  I already checked.

Audrey:  fml

Me:  Word.