Not So Wordless Wednesday

First, I would like to apologize for anyone out there who’s sick of me posting stuff from Amazon.  I do have my reasons for haunting the bigliest online shopping supercenter lately, something about an impending home purchase and how I am currently on a credit-card time-out.

 

They always say…don’t buy anything for the house until you have the keys in your hot little hands.  So I’m not actually buying anything…I’m just electronically window-shopping.

I’m currently at T-minus 16 days to the closing, and the excitement is beginning to build.  Chainmaille Central is near enough to smell the … whatever the hell those basement smells are…

 

 

Aaaaanyway…back to Amazon…

The SQO has discovered the joys of Tiger Balm for the stiff muscles along his shoulder and spine.  We borrowed some from the kids, and we’re rapidly approaching the point where we’re gonna have to replace their bottle, because he swears the stuff actually works.

Smells to high heaven, and it’s impossible to wash off my hands after I’ve spread it out on his back…but the relief is worth it.

The stuff is kinda like hopped up Ben Gay.

Now, because I was at home and finally asked the kids what this stuff is called (because the label on the jar is all Japanese (or another Eastern country’s lettering…they all look the same to me…) writing, the computer was close at hand when I got my answer.

Naturally, I jumped on Amazon to look the stuff up…and found an awesome review…

After such a glowing review, I couldn’t NOT put that in my cart, no?

 

A Tragedy Tonight

That slinky went down the stairs FAST.  We zipped past that dangerous season, and it seems we’ve jumped straight into summer.  Hot and the humidity factor is rising.

But sticky is no excuse for not hoofing it in to work.  Rain will still force me into the car, but just because we’re above 80 in the afternoon is not enough to stop me from taking to the streets.  And mornings have been beautiful!

Except for THIS morning.  As I was making my way out of the park, thoroughly enmeshed in the song pounding against my eardrums and celebrating the smell of freshly mowed grass…I happened to see this…

The poor little fella!  To be cut down so brutally in his prime by a riding mower!

Some day…when I’m ALLLLLLL chopped up!

I’ll never forget ya, little buddy!

More on that Damned Shower

Soooo…against my better judgement, I took a shower with the ‘questionable’ bar of soap.

I’ve regretted it…
Especially my right butt cheek.

 

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most graceful swan, gliding in stunning white over pure blue, mirror-bright water…rather, I resemble a duck.

 

Waddling along.
Through an endless field.
Of dry grass.
Missing half his wing feathers.
And a leg.

So I had a bit of a slip, and ended up sitting down on the ledge of the tub…REALLY hard!

 

In between a stream of rather inventive expletives, I heard it.

The soap…
giggling with the abandon of the damned.

 

I’m switching back to Ivory…

 

 

 

 

Showering with the Damned

There’s this little boutique-y shop downtown that makes its money by selling small portions of its floorspace to the REALLY small business craftsperson.  The business is kinda like the farmer’s markets that pop up in cities all over the country, only year round and with the comfort of HVAC.

I’ve often bounced around the idea of renting my own floor space in the place to open up a new visibility point for my chainmaille.

Aaaaaanyway….This particular boutique has a stall for this craftsperson who makes soap.
It’s fantastic stuff, this handcrafted soap.  They add colors in swirls, make the stuff smell amazing, and the bars get their intended job done.  My favorite scent (of the moment) is an almond/cherry mix, although I’ve also been particular to their sandalwood spice mix in the past.

So, last night, shower happened.  Here I am, sudsing up without a care in the world, and I look…really LOOK… at my bar of sweet & bubbly solidly saponified fat…

I looked up soap-making quite some time ago…fascinating process!

And it occurred to me that there’s a rather demonic face being rubbed all over my…

let’s just say…

feminine bits.

A bit TMI?

Not sure if I should use the rest of the bar, or craft a protective circle around it and attempt to exorcise the demon?

Evil shouldn’t smell this sweet…

Wordless? Wednesday

Hey…look at that!  They’ve got a nifty day of the week where bloggers are just supposed to post pictures, without any of those complex verbs, nouns, or conjunctions.

Oops…I dun did wurds.  My bad…

I did get to walk to work yesterday.  The weather was supposed to be a bit damp and chill in the morning, but nicer for the walk home…so I braved it out, a couple of layers in the morning that I could stuff in the backpack on the way home.

 

I just about froze my ass off…which may have been a good thing for the whole weight loss thing…but not so good for the actual walk home.

But, I survived, and managed to find one interesting thing to point my camera at while I was at it.

I’m still giggling over this…because all I can hear every time I look at this picture is

“Someday…when I’m ALLLLL growed up!!!”

 

Even the Cats are Artistic here

Now, I do have 4 furballs in residence here…

 

Each have their own cat-way of doing the things that it is cats do.

Mariko is the talker of the bunch.  She’s ALWAYS got an opinion, and is happy to share.  She also likes to pick on Spooky, then comes running to one of the humans in the household when he ‘picks’ back.  Above all else…she needs to be the FIRST breathing thing in a room, so she always gets underfoot as she races to be upstairs and on the ledge before I’ve finished climbing up the stairs.

I’ve learned to look before I step 😀

 

Spooky is the proverbial rebellious teen.  If he wants to do something, no amount of chastising, yelling, stomping or finger-snapping is going to deter him.  He’ll continue to push the boundary until you get the water bottle out and squirt him with it…then be back in 5 minutes to start the cycle over again.  He is very much a cat, convinced of his own superiority, and lets the humans know this on an hourly basis.  He’s also not very user-friendly, and hates strangers.  Picking him up usually involves a hospital visit for the uninformed, as he uses teeth and claws with little to no provocation.

 

Lillian, on the other hand, is not a cat…at least, she THINKS she’s not a cat.  Granted, she spends a lot of time on the ledge getting warm and sunshine-y… like a cat.  She grooms constantly… like a cat.  She likes laps and occasionally bats at catnip toys… like a cat.  But she is not, in her mind, a cat.  She doesn’t do cat things with the other cats.  They’ve learned this (more or less) for their own safety, because reminding Illy that she’s a cat usually involves a lot of very-much-cat caterwaulin’ and claws.  She also has the feline equivalent of RBF (Resting Bitch Face)

 

Which leaves me with Henry.  Of all the cats, Henry had to be the one to go last in my lineup, because he won’t mind being at the back of the pack.  Where Lillian has RBF, Henry has a perpetual smile.  Henry can best be described as a Stoner cat, because he’s always happy and relaxed…unless the front door is opened.  Henry is also our little escape artist, because there’s got to be something real cool on the other side of our front door, and he can’t wait to share a bowl with whatever it is.

 

The four of them have been at the little cardboard scratching pad we’ve had in the house for claw exercises.  With all the stories lately about how deforming declawing a cat can be, I’m glad we made the decision to keep all paws intact, even though it does require a bit more maintenance on our parts keeping all 40 nails blunted.  Here’s what the cats have done to the one we really need to replace:

Our furballs must be happy with us humans…the said so by scratching a smiley face into their pad.

 

The Green Room

I do believe it’s starting to get warmer out there.

 

Granted, it’s only the end of February, and I’m sure that Mother Nature has been off her meds the entire month…but it will actually be warm enough to WALK TO WORK tomorrow.

I’ve been stuck in the car all winter long…and I really, REALLY miss my quiet time before and after work.

Maybe I’ll see how well my little plastic buddy has fared through the cold winter months.

 

In the meantime…there’s an apartment complex I walk past on my way to and from my car every day…they have this little shrubbery

 

 

that the building owners keep decorated for the season.  Seeing how the next holiday coming up is St. Patty’s day (a big one in a state that accepts any excuse to drink beer!) so I stopped and grabbed a couple of photos.  It’s not Monty Python…but it’ll do.

 

 

I don’t mean to offend…

Went to Woodman’s the tonight, in search of toilet paper.

 

Ooooooh – what an exciting adventure, no?

 

When I was heading out, I noticed a bin of product that tickled my sense of the absurd:

 

All I could think was:  how incredibly sexist of this egg noodle company to sell extra broads…coupled with ‘I’ll bet this is the best seller in certain political circles and ‘old boy’ clubs.’

I really need to rein in my weirdness at times, don’t I?

 

 

Sir Spam-a-lot

I have officially been ‘threatened’ with spam.

This would have shown up in the comments on my Adventures in Goodwill post had the spam filters not caught it:

This means YOU, personally, really should weight your words SERIOUSLY f z f, and I strongly advice you to delete this written defamation i c v c of both characters and a huge group of people who do not take slander and character assassination like this easily l b y t s. I do not know which organization you have got to back you up, but if you do not care about lawsuits in the multi-million dollar range, fine, just keep on what you are doing c b n c x. If you DO care about spending x-amounts of money to try and defend this CLEARLY written libel, then take my DELETE-advice. Your “Post” is now officially taken both copies and screen-shots of and digitally stored for later use and evidence. This is just a warning. We are antifa, we do not forget.

 

I wonder – did they

1. Find the leather pants in my size as horrific as I did?  Imagine the blowback if I’d posted of picture of me actually WEARING them?
2. Become jealous over my acquiring black & orange striped socks?
3. Rush down to their local Goodwill in search of Twister pants, and not find them?

 

The world may never know?

Catching up with New/Old Friends

So…

 

The other day, I was walking home from work.

yea…shocker…right?

I’ve changed my route slightly, to avoid the carnage that used to be my cathedral.  I sometimes wonder if they’ve cleared the ‘Earthly remains’ from their yard – yet I still can’t gather the courage to walk past the sight of the worst mass murder in recent Waukesha history.

If you have NO idea what I’m talking about – welcome to the T&T.  Trust me, it doesn’t always get this weird.

this is a ‘light’ day…

Here’s a little backstory for you…

I’ve taken to walking around the back of this school’s sports field.  Most people ’round these parts would call it a football field, (Wisconsin:  a beer state with a football problem), but as I don’t bleed Green & Gold during the fall/winter sports season, I’m just gonna call it an all-purpose ‘sweat till you melt’ field of athletic prowess.

My new favorite spot to stop and have a bit of fun is the outdoor play equipment behind the field-o-sweaty-dreams.

Not because I’m entering my second childhood or anything – but I stop and bounce a bit on the very rubberized ground cover for no other reason besides:   IT’S SPRINGY!

I amuse easily…

Kids these days don’t appreciate that play equipment ‘back in the day’ was usually installed on nothing more than normal, everyday soil, packed rock hard by many, MANY feet.

I feel a curious desire to yell “Get off my LAWN’ right now…

After the brief bounce, I hop back on the (now very hard) sidewalk and continue making my way home.

Remember that ‘other day’ I mentioned at the beginning of the post?

I found something…disturbing…

 

There’s a little white speck on the pavement.

 

 

 

Walking a bit closer, I found…to my horror:

 

SOMEONE DECAPITATED SNOOPY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charles Schwartz is rolling in his grave right now…ROLLING, I tell you!

 

 

I beat a hasty retreat from the site of yet another grizzly murder as fast as my legs could carry me (after I snapped the picture, of course!).  No way I wanted to be tied into the brutal slaying of a beloved cartoon character.

 

 

Is it too early to watch “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?”  I love the bit when Snoopy tangled with the lawn chair…

 

 

As I’m walking down the street, all is serene.  I’m guessing nobody’s reported the horrific crime yet…but then it dawns on me.

Back at the playground.

Is it?

Let’s adjust the focus, here…

Oh….crap….

He’s BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

 

On one hand, I’m glad to see that he’s able to fend for himself, feed himself, and appears to be quite happy with his new life as a wild plastic shape-altering thingie…

They grow up so fast, don’t they?

But on the other hand…should I be concerned that he’s apparently turning cannibalistic?