Suddenly has an insatitiable craving for mangos

...Suddenly has an insatiable craving for mangoes...

"Oh Lord.", Lucy groaned. She was working for Rachel as a housekeeper, not a servant. And yet the woman insisted that Lucy tend to her hand and foot whenever she was working her cleaning shift. Trying to get all her cleaning duties done in time in addition to appeasing Rachel's requests almost always resulted in failure. And then, of course, Rachel would through a fit over how the baseboards weren't dusted or the coffee table still had rings on it. "they wouldn't HAVE rings on it if you'd use the coasters I provided." Lucy muttered under her breath.
"Oh and while you're at it, make up a nice strawberry margarita for me, dear" Rachel called from her bedroom
It was 11am, and Rachel was still in her nightgown and gaudy fluffy slippers. The kind meant for 13 year old girls.
Rachel was always at her worst when she was drinking; and she was ALWAYS drinking. She was a complete slob and yet demanded the most minute details of her house to be cleaned.
"This is impossible!" Lucy shouted to Mipsy, Rachel's Bishon Frise.
Mipsy just tilted her head in sympathy.

This was attempt number one of the Write on Wednesdays thing. Using the most recent Facebook status update option.
Hooray?

First day of Autumn!

Autumn is probably my favorite season, aside from the fact that it hearlds the lowest behaviors of civilized humanity and ends on a massacre of holiday madness.

I love the crisp, cool temperatures (I'm not a hot weather summer baby, nor am I a cold weather winter bunny) and the change of leaves, we have a lot of sugar maples in our area and it's like a 24hour fireworks show to look at all the tree colors when they're in full array.

I love stomping on crunchy leaves. Even though I'm nearly thirty (eep!) I'll still scurry out of my way to go jump on a particularly crunchy looking leaf. I swear that sound is one of the most satisfying expreiences ever. Dude, I'm jonesin for a good, crunchy pile of leaves to jump in, just thinkin of it. o_O

 I love caramel apples, but only the ones that come handmade from a the local farmer's market or candy shoppe, they're made with REAL caramel and a good crunchy-tart granny-smith apple to off-set the smooth sweetness of the caramel. The ones that come pre-packaged at the grocery store, I just consider a joke. They're made with some sort of cheap-ass caramel/peanut butter blend (to cut costs and keep the coating soft) and the apples are usually rather mushy, mealy, and overall too sweet, making for a caramel apple that it just quease inducing.

I love pecan tarts (mini pecan pies) I know those are sorta available year-round, but they're just more special in the fall for some reason. I preferr the tarts over actual pecan pie cause I can eat a whole one and not feel like I'm trying to digest a blue whale for the next three days. (I don't think I could ever eat a whole pecan pie myself though...in one day anyway)

I love pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin ice cream...but not pumpkin lattes...I prefer my coffee and squash/gourds seperatly, thank you.

I love(ed) Thanksgiving growing up...not so much anymore. Growing up T-giving was the only holiday we spent with just my G-ma D. She was awesome, her house was calm and quiet and smelled good. (as opposed to my general home/otherG-ma's who was loud, chaotic and sorta musty smelling) The food was all home cooked and served in the same dishes she'd had since she was first married back in the 1930's. Her house was old and quaint, the fixtures still original to the home. The bathroom and kitchen looked as if they were torn from a page in a 1950's Better Home and Gardens. Slightly gaudy in their pastel pink and retrofit design, but it made it all the more homey. I loved that time of year. I'm all teary eyed and nostalgic for it as write it all out.

It breaks my heart that one of my favorite times of the year have to be squalched (I don't care if "squalched" is a word or not...it is now) by the greed and madness of the holidays and the infection from which they're dying...retail corporations.
It pisses me off so much that stores are putting out holiday stuff earlier year after year. And it's really only with the HallowThanksMas season too. We start seeing Halloween and T-giving deco out mid august and Christmas deco in early September...but whenit comes to the warm weather holidays, we're good to see any of it till about a month or a few weeks prior.
What is it about the winter holidays that make everyone so psycotic? I think it's a underlying trait that dates back to our primitive ancestors who had to hurriedly gather provisions to survive the upcoming winter. Except nowadays, instead of clamboring to get the last of the winter squash or hunt down just one more wooly mammoth; people are clamboring to get the last Rockin Elmo or just one more Limited Edition Xbox controller.
Personally, I don't see the fiscal worth in putting holiday items out so early. Almost no one is gonna be thinking of buying cornacopias or little paper ghosts when it's August and the temperatures are still in the mid 80's or more. Retailers set these things out, and they sit untouched for a couple weeks before the general public thinks "Hey! it's getting nippy out! let's go buy some seasonally appropriate crap!" I would think that the shelf space would be better utilized with other products that would sell right away as opposed to being the first ones in town to have the Snoopy-In-A-Pumpkin deco. Ever notice how the genreal reaction to the first seasonal deco to come out isn't
"Oh. look at that neat thing! I must buy three now!"
 but rather
"Oh, for corn's sake! They've got this stuff out allready?"
Even if the corporate lineup doesnt have anything for those shelves in between Labor Day and Halloween, they could at least be used for sale items or promotional items. Make items that aren't selling well look more appealing by putting them in a new area, so they could sell more at full price before they're marked down for clearance.
But what do I know, I'm just a low level associate who is directly invovled with these items and the customers who buy them on a daily basis. I'm sure the corporate persons know much better with their faceless reports and suck-up reveiws.
More on my reminescance and disdain for the holidays later...it's off to the Mart-Mart for me!

I made a turkey today. His name is Eugene. He's $30.


.......

On less fowl topics (haha) methinks I need to cut my hair again soon. Last time I cut my hair was in the late spring/early summer of 2009.  I pretty much never do much at all with my hair. It's massively thick and floofy and wild and has a very opinionated mind of its own so maintaining any sort of style takes hours of preperation and will only stay in place for a couple hours dispite using nearly an entire container of super-hold-whatever.
Beyond that, I don't really like getting my hair cut. I'm not too keen on human contact. Aside from my hubby, who is exept from my contact aversion... I can somewhat tolerate limited contact from friends and family...but total strangers are another story. If I don't know you, don't touch me.
Growing up in a household that had a very German mindset in way of living there wasn't much affection going on. Now before anyone gives me any guff on picking on a particular lineage of people. On my father's side my grandfather is pure blooded German and my grandmother is half-German, half-Norweign..and they lived three blocks from my parents and me. And with their forceful way of insisting things go their way...I grew up pretty much as they dictated. For them, life is all about effeciency, thriftyness (read: cheapass), intelignece and timelyness.
All these things are well and good, and I'm very grateful to be well versed in these things; however, snuggly cuddlyness wasn't on the docket very often. And when it was it was rather ackward and forced. Just had a fight with ol' G-ma? Well now ya gotta go hug her even though you're still peeved with no time given to cool down a bit first. Meeting weird old friends of G-pa? Well ya gotta give them a pat on the back and sit on their knee while they tell you strange ancedotes you have no interest in hearing.
Aaaannd that was about it.
As a result, I don't like people touching me. It's wierd and I feel invaded and confined. So therefore, getting my hair cut at a shop is kinda un-nerving.

Through most of my childhood, my G-ma cut my hair, and did an atrocious job, for some reaons she thought it was nessicarry to take her glasses OFF before cutting hair (so she doesn't get hair on them) and I got stabbed in the ear/neck more times than I care to remember(though never badly enough to require medical attention, thankfully). Most of my kid years I looked like my hair was cut by a chimpanzee who'd just downed a case of espresso beans. The few times I did get it cut by a trained person my G-ma would always say it was "crooked" and grab up her scissors and start hacking away, much to my distress. (but you dont cross a hefty German grandmother with pointy scissors...nonono...ya just dont) 
Then, through most of Jr.High and High School, my best friend took over the job of Spritzy's Personal Stylist...and did a rather damn good job for a teenager with no training. She even did my updo's for prom/homecoming and all (not that my hair allowed them to stay up for long) And since graduating HighSchool... er... eleven?... yeah... eleven years ago, I've had my hair cut all of four times, and only two of them were done in a shop...and neither were very good.
Most of the "stylists" in the area are fresh from the local chop-shop-training-school so they're not too well versed in handling free-spirited hair like mine. Plus, currently living in Podunk-Nowheresville, we dont have many good-yet-affordable options. There's a lot of the $6 chain places that can't even get a simple buzzed blended top with shorter sides cut right (my hubby get his hair cut twice a month and there's only one lady in the whole town who can not fuck it up so far) and there's a couple local places that I just plain do not trust cause they're in a funky part of town and are run out of someone's living room. And, due to the dynamics of this area, there are far more places that cater to weaves and braids and wigs than my perpetual lion's mane.
...
Where was I going with all this?
...
Oh yeah! Right!
...
I'm prolly gonna cut my hair again soon; though many of my friends and my hubby object when I do so. I prefer to donate it when I lop it all off so I've gotta let it grow another half inch or so for it to accheive the minimum 10 inch mark.
...
Why did I just devote a whole post to my infrequent haircutting habits? Along with a dash of my distorted upbringing and a recent yarn-based creation?
...
Eh, oh well....if ya read this far, I'm much obliged. I'm sure the next post will be much more ...uh...less...hairy? Or something?
Honestly I don't even really know...I just hopped on and started writing aimlessly...and lookit where it got me.
Heh. Oh well.
Peas everyone!

Did I mention I abhore traveling?

Well, I survived the trip out to Colorado. The flight there wasn't too bad. Though dispite taking both a prescription anti-emttic and dramamine I had to focus really hard on pretending to sleep and pretending that the bumps and jostles were just bumps in a road...not in the air three miles up.
Most of the trip was for naught unfortunatly. We had gone out there to finalize anf close out my late father-inl-aw's belongings/rental properties/bank accounts and so forth. We had hoped to find some things that would help compensate us for the costs of the funeral services but very little resulted from that. There was practally nothing of value in his apartment, not even enough for us to have an estate sale to allow us to just sell out everything for whatever it would go for. Though thankfully the estate people did fid us someone who would clear out all the very old furniture and stacks of magazines and crates of WTF for no charge to us. FIL did have a insurance policy at one point, but had stopped paying on it so it defaulted, leaving us with no policy to redeem to help the costs either.
There were supposed to be some firearms and other memrobelia among his things, but they were nowhere to be found. We suspect that they were stolen and pawned off from him by somone,but can't really prove they did it. So that leaves us without another possible redemtion for the costs. *sigh* it was all very frustrating and stressfull and very disheartening.

We found a home for the dog, he went back home with the breeder from which my FIL originally received the dog.

We still need to find a buyer for the two horses and the beaten-down old trailer...that's gonna be a challenge...anyone wanna buy a horse? ;)

We did try to make the trip a bit better by finding nice places to eat for our meals.
We found a nice little bistro in an artsy district of Denver, called Gaia, they had good quishe and great cocoa.
We went to a few chain restaurants that we don't have in our area.
And we went to a authentic Japanese country cooking restaurant in the Denver university area called Domo. That place was really freakin neat. the inside looked like a cave and a Shinto shrine, they had chopsticks as regular tableware as opposed rto forks, and the portions were massive. I felt bad leaving more than half my bowl of Udon and brown rice with Unagi. I definatly reccomend this place for some cuisine experience.
We also got to go to the Celestial Seasonings Tea company and take a tour through the plant and eat at the cafe.
Now, I am a tea efficianato and a tea-a-holic. So this was very special for me. The tour was breif, but interesting, and the Mint Room was like standing inside the world's largest box of Altoid's times a thousand. The cafe was really nice too. Had some really good vegetarian potato-artichoke soup and a buffalo burger...which was ackward to eat while sitting across from a wall-size mural of their Morning Thunder artpiece. I also bought a good deal of teas and small souvineers.
The flight back was terrible, bad turbulence coupled with sitting in the very back row and seated right between the bathrooms and some guy with weird gassy problems. It took every one of my molecules to not barf all over nor spaz out like some sorta wack-a-doo.
I'm still dizzy and sorta unhinged from the flight. I'm hoping it improves with sleep this evening. Ugh....so exausted. *collapses on floor*
p.s. Please forgive typos and grammatical and spelling errors in this post. I'm too tired to care, too dizzy to tell if they really are mistakes or just my eyes crossing...and my cat, Cow, is insisting she sit on my shoulder like a backwards parrot at the moment. (This is how Cow gives hugs)
Chores strat up again tomorrow....ugh...anyone wanna come mow the back yard for me? I'll make cookies!

Well...I thought it was funny

I come up with the strangest things sometimes...

Furthermore, I don't quite approve of this guy's wardorbe...I guess he chose to wear an orange shirt to match the swim floaties he seems to be wearing on his arms.

Dont judge my apparent lack of artisic skill! You try doing better in fifteen minutes with MSPaint! ^_-*

Wake me up when September Ends.

Methinks this is the song to define my life for this month. It's been a chaotic and emotionally draining whirlwind of...uh...everything.
Starting September 5th, I strain a muscle in my back trying to move a laundry basket while Bahji, my calico was sitting in it. This is no strange event as she plants her fluffy tush in the laundry basket every time I get a load to fold. So I usually just set the basket, cat and all, back into the closet and let her get out on her own terms. My back decided to take offense to this on that day.
September 8th, we received word that my father-in-law, who lived in Colorado (we live in Illinois) had passed away at the tragic age of 52. He had battled multiple hip-implant infections, and servere respitory complications for well over a decade so it wasn't a 100% shock, but still very unsettling considering what a tough ol fighter he was.
My husband, being the only child, was shouldered with the responsibility of having to go thorugh with planning, arranging and coordinating everything regarding services. Did you know that the adverage funeral starts at $9,000? Yeah, I have decided that when I die, I wanna just be turned to ash and stuck in a tin somewhere. No frills for me, thanks...I won't need them.
Added complications to the scenario are that my FIL's belongings are all the way out in Colorado. This includes two horses, a Skye Terrier my hubs is deathy allergic to, and an undisclosed amount of firearms/weaponry... and we have no documentation to allow us to even handle those firearms, much less take them across state lines. We have no clue what to do with a horse...we know they trot, eat hay, and whinny and that's about it.
So I got in touch with an estate sale company out there and they're gonna help us determine the potential value of things (minus whatever personal keepsakes we retain) and what the heck to do with these horses and firearms.
Though some of his family mentioned interest in keeping said firearms...but that brings back the complications of how the heck do we get them from point A to point B without incurring any felonies, misdemeanors, or ending up in handcuffs for some reason or another (kinky nightgames not included)
It was a bit of a blessing and good fortune that my hubs was scheduled for vacation time a week after his dad passed, so we will be using that time to trek out to the mountian lands and do our best to rummage through things and hastily determine what to do with which and so on. I know that a lot of things will have to be decided later on via phone/email/other fabulous technology cause there's only so much that can be done in four and a half days.

Now, there are somethings you prolly should know about this trip in generall, regarding your beloved Spritzy.
Spritzys are not made for travel. They are made for staying the fuck in place. They do not handle transport very well at all.
Spritzys are rather like squirrels in their figdety and nervous mannerisims. They don't like to sit still and pretty much go fucking nuts (pun intended) when you confine them in a small space for any length of time.
So riding somewhere is never fun for me, it's evven worse with airplanes cause we cant stop and pull over for a few moments so I can run around like a yappy dog.
I'm very nearly phobic of flying. So large crowds, confined spaced, scary looking security people, loud noises, and being really, REALLY high up are all bad things for a Spritzy.
I also get really awful altitude sickness. I went to Colorado a few times as a kid and spent a lot of the time wallowing in misery and nausea rather than enjoying the mountiany fun. My home area has an altitude in the 600ft range and the area we are going to be isin the 4,500 foot range. Fun beans.

Try as hard as I might not to be, I really am a deluxe garden variety neurotic. I get all spaztic about the stupidest things and my brain just wont drop the damn subject till it's good and ready too. No matter how much consoling and logic it's fed, it's a stubborn little body part. Pray for me y'all. This week is gonna be...augh!

Bandwagon, meet Jump.

Whelp, seems like most everyone I know has/had a blog of some form at some point, and so therefore...I SHALL TOO!

What to write about? I dunno...random musings and chaotic little thoughts that meander though my blonde little brain...I suppose.

I've got a Facebook page for my artsy/craftsy stuff I make:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Spritzy-Stuff/152528578163489

And I've got an Etsy account for buying those artsy/craftsy things:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Spritzy?ref=pr_shop_more

And I've got a aweshome hubby who takes great care of me and lets me indulge myself in yarn and beads **love**

And I've got three fur-babies in the form of glamorous cats.
There's Tipper, who is made of grey things and lives for cold-nose kisses and cat-treats.
Then there's Cow, who looks like a holstein and is the cuddliest little box of love ever.
And Bahji, made of stripes and is Cow's sister and the biggest scamp any calico could ever be, loves to talk and snuggle under the blankets.

Allright, Self...remember to post on this dang thing from time to time!