Sudokuaholics Anonymous 10

G-d, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Amen

Hello again, my friends.
I've been trying to catch up on the reading -
Oh MizT, I'm so sorry about Al. Sending your whole family hugs and gentle thoughts ... ♥
June, hoping Belinda is feeling better very soon.
Happy Teenager-hood to Lachlan. :)
Heidi, really hope you are pain-free very soon. And Rolanda's Mum - sending hugs. Also to anyone else who needs them ... ♥

Heidi, congrats on finding hay for winter. I know you did not want to sell off your herd, you worked to hard to build it up with just the right cattle. I too am so glad you plan to be here for Al's service. I hoped you would come.

OK, you asked for it, mentioning skunks. this is another Al story and yep, tiss true.

Al and his cousin were in need of money. Not a lot of jobs for 12 year old boys to earn cash. His cousin BJ needed a new inner tube for his bicycle. Al wanted a new seat for his bike. It was fall of the year, they put on their jackets, got Al's father's big flashlight, a burlap bag, and sharpened their pocket knives. Off to the woods they went, out behind his aunts property.

A bit of looking and they found a nice long, straight limb with a fork in it. they trimmed it down just right and set off, looking for possum dens. They were going possum twisting.

the way this works, you look into old hollow logs, holes in the ground and other likely places a possum makes it's den. Select a likely one, and one boy holds the bag, while shining the light into the hole. IF they see 2 green eyes shining back at them, the other boy thrusts in the stick till it is at the possum, then quickly twists the stick into the fur, and snatches it out. the idea is to snatch it right into the bag of the bag holding boy. Worked fine first 3 times they tried, and they had 3 live possums in the bag. They knew they could get $2 each for the possums from an older black man that lived up on the hill. but $6 between 2 boys was not quite enough, they needed one more. They found one more likely hole under a big boulder, shinned in the light, and caught one more critter in stick. OUT came the stick, and they are face to rear end of a SKUNK! Skunk lost no time in spraying, catching both full in the face. Needless to say, Al dropped the bag, loosing the possums, and they commenced to start tearing off clothes to get way from the smell. there was a nearby creek, no matter the water was icy and the wind was blowing, wash wash, scrub with sand, scrub some more, stop to throw up. their eyes were streaming with tears, worse than tear gas.

So they set out for home, hoping his aunt could help them some. Stumble from the woods, across the back yard, and onto the old farmhouse back porch. They make it to the kitchen, sans clothing, when aunt and several of her church sewing circle friends meet them! Talk about 2 embarrassed boys.

Aunt gets them back on the back porch, opens several gallon gars of tomato juice she had canned, puts them into a wash tub and scrubbed them with juice and a brush. AL swears it was with a wire brush, taking hair hide and all but the smell!!

would Al say the smell of skunk was worse than rotten potatoes, you bettcha!

Haha Tricia - what a great Al story!
Never having been near a skunk, I don't know how bad it smells, but it sounds worse than anything I have ever experienced!

Tricia, I cannot begin to imagine what skunk smells like ... and I'm very glad of that! :0

Is anybody else having trouble getting into FB?? Or is it just us?

I'm not having any trouble, Cyn ...

MizT, I am loving your Al tales, please tell us some more xoxo

Afternoon all,
MizT, I loved that story so much I had to read it out to hubby. He has copped a spray or two during his childhood too. He agrees that the tomato sauce wouldn't have gotten rid of the smell - nothing would he says. I have only smelled it from a distance so use some imagination to work out what it is like up close and personal. I agree with Gail - more stories please! I'm sure there are some Tricia tales that are fun too if you run out of Al ones...

Happy teenager-hood to Lachie. I'm having trouble believing he is that old already!! Wishing him a pimple free year..

Heidi, I'm so glad you will be able to represent SA for us... You'll feel kind of full that day as we'll all be projecting through you! I hope it's a fair way into the future though. Soon enough for Al to avoid unbearable pain but not a moment sooner!!

Mama, one day I will be able to write like you - probably in my next life time...

There is a smell in between skunk and rotten potatoes - cat ur1ne... Dimmie does not like litter which has been a significant problem. Hubby says I have successfully removed the stink from the house. All it took was 5 loads of washing and... dragging the wood box outside, plastic glove work, sweeping, hosing (yes, I actually hosed down the mud room) followed by mopping with super hot water, vinegar and a few drops of vanilla oil.

a tad 'smelly' around here

Great story Tricia

Thanks to everyone who wished Lachlan HB for the other day - he had a great family dinner that night and is off 10 pin bowling tonight with friends.

A couple of weeks ago we bought Col a GPS to use in his ute and his truck since all his boss provides is a 7 yo street directory and often his deliveries are in new estates - but that's another story.
His mobile login is COL not Colin, but whenever he turns on the GPS, which has bluetooth so connects automatically to the phone, it says 'connected to Colonel'. Just wait until the grandies get hold of that one. He'll be Colonel for life!

For those who couldn't sleep for worrying, I got back into FB, must have been a glitch.

Colonel Col... thanks for the laugh

Cyn.. my FB page has changed.. just now.. weird!

Al must have had a fun time when he was young, it is lovely to hear these stories ((HUGS)) to both of you.
I've put up a photo on FB of the state of my lounge carpet after the dogs had been out digging in the garden last night. It should have just derevooh off this morning but looks as if I will have to get the shampooer out.

Morning all. Coffee is ready, help yourself.

Tricia, I am also enjoying the stories of Al. I will have to read this one to my hubby later. I think he and the boys will get a kick out of it.

I have also never had the "pleasure" of smelling a skunk and hope I never do!

I really started a long conversation on smells and guess what? I did not have a rotten potato, it was an old box of special mix lorikeet food that had gone rotten. It was way back at the bottom of the pantry. I had to get Ken to get down and scrub it out as it had 'grown' with a brown mould over nearby containers. Now clean and deodorised but things have to be put back.
Our monthly BBQ at the bowling club tonight but we have Laura so she came with us. After 11pm and still trying to get her to bed.

Years ago, back in '79, IH and I got our first collie from the pound. We lived in a small place without a fenced in yard, so I walked Ivan several times a day. Late one night, before going to bed, I took Ivan out for a nice long walk. As we came back up the driveway, we heard some crashing and banging around our trash cans. The guy we got the place from told us that he'd had a lot of problems with stray cats getting into the trash, so I released Ivan to go after the cat.... with me following close behind. It was a moonless night so I could only see a few feet in front of me. Well, Ivan got to the cans and a screaming racket ensued, then stopped suddenly. Out of the darkness rushed a small black and white critter, which promptly sprayed me right in the face. (I was standing right in front of Gil's brand new car, with the windows open.) Both I and the inside of the car got a full blast. Ivan had been sprayed in the eyes and mouth and was foaming up a storm. We both fled into the house and Ivan ran up to IH for comfort. IH screamed in terror, ran upstairs and locked himself in the bedroom. I didn't have much tomato juice but I used what I had in stock on the 2 of us, then drove IH's new, smelly car to an all-night store where I bought them out of tomato juice. The dog and I had a lingering aroma of skunk on us for about 2 months. The car stunk to high heaven for 6 months and never fully recovered. IH had to drive to work every day with the windows wide open and his head out the window.

As bad a smell, or worse is HOT cat pee. We had out house on the market so we could move to Kentucky. One of the cats, Opus, didn't like the changed routine of getting the house ready for show, so he got even by peeing all over the burners on the stove.... without my knowledge. The first time I tried to cook, the smell was overpowering. It was worse than skunk spray! No amount of cleaning would get rid of the cat pee. I had to buy new burners. But it turned prospective buyers off fast. The smell lingered something fierce in the kitchen.

Hi All,
Loved the stories about skunks...and Tricia, I'll add my voice in calling for more Al and Tricia stories...they do seem to engender great responses to...The way you write about them adds to the stories fun...I can imagine hearing you or Al tell the story in person...southern drawl giving all of its charming humor more emphasis...LMBO....

Suzie...you write very well during this life, but thanks for the nice words.

Hello all ...

I'll second the motion, Mamacita!

Heidi have the puppies put in an appearance yet?

Nope, and the longer they wait, the happier I am. They would have been a bit premature last weekend. It looks like the last breeding is the one that took, too, not the first.

I'm hoping to go to the North American International Livestock Exhibition tomorrow morning. I need to take Angel's temperature to see if I can.

Evening all. Just stopping by for a minute. I don't have funny stories about smells, my problem was mud. I was 7 and we left Miami to drive to Colorado. We stopped the first night in Georgia. My brother volunteered to take me to the playground. I went down the slide and landed feet first, with my brand new sneakers, in a puddle of red Georgia mud. My mom spent the next hour or two trying to scrub mud off my sneakers so they could dry for the next day.

See, I was always trouble

Heidi, I agree with you about HOT cat pee! Having always had several cats, every now and then, one finds it important to mark their territory, much to my disgust and annoyance. Usually the spots are quickly found and dealt with, but not this time. It had been a mild Autumn so we had not yet turned on our electric bar heater. Well, when we did turn it on...PEEEEEE EWWWWWWW!!! Pulled the whole thing to bits and washed each bit seperately!

Morning.
Saturday Morning
Sloshy Machine doing overtime
The House Cleaner is gnynaelc
the Gardener mowing the lawn
The Gardener will be changing his hat soon, and will zoom zoom in ze car and do a bit of running around, visit is MIL to bring the Bins out for collection...

We had a male cat who got under our house. He marked territory on the outside of heat ducts. Must have been a slight leak, the cat pee got hot, and odor in house was terrible! Heidi, perhaps yours was better in that it could be found and washed. Could not find under the house, so yuck stayed a while.

Loving the stories, both the stinky ones and the red mud one! I never did get the clay stains out of my kids' shoes...

Went shopping with hubby today and spent a bunch of money we don't have on that thing that happens at the end of the year... Alie will get a Wii game, Dana will get a ss frying pan (has a nice heavy base), a flat baking tray, a cake pan, 2 beach towels to use as bath towels (thereby adding colour to her bathroom when she has one) and a cute little girl beach towel (hope it is a girl!), and 2 books for the baby. Believe it or not, if you don't count the books I spent the same on both of them!!

Alie's bf is over today and his goal is to move to Minnesota! Hubby told him a story about his old room-mate who was originally from there. He used to get up at 6am to shovel his driveway and hope that the street was plowed so he could get out to drive to work.

I told him I thought he moved to CA to get away from his family, he was really, really cheap and I honestly think he didn't like having to remember birthdays and buy gifts at christmas. He had 13 brothers and sisters most of whom had about the same number of kids, and then there were the cousins... That's where we got the name Dana, one of his nieces, or was it a nephew? Could have been either.

I am up for intermission, the machine needed watering. Al is sleeping soundly after a not so great day. I will spare you the details.

I think I mentioned Al will be buried at the National Cemetery. I found out today just how that goes. the flag ceremony and playing of taps will be done at a pavilion, not at his grave site. Only 3 floral arrangements will be allowed at grave site, so we must remember to ask for no flowers or for floral arrangements in containers, or vases (or flowers with roots, living plants in pots) to go home with family. The director at funeral home said that can go into the newspaper announcements.


We have a start of photos for the slide show of Al's life. this is now a done thing in this electronic age. His brother and cousin got the photos their mother had kept and brought a nice assortment of him, school pictures, photos of him in civil war costume from when their town celebrated the anniversary of the civil war, the only photo of him in uniform, family shots. My sister's hubby will scan them in add some of the photos he has taken over the years at family gatherings and make a disk for showing them on the 5 big flat screen TV's in the chapel. A celebration of his life.

Because we have had a rocky start to the last few mornings, I am tonight going to wake him and give his "breathing" medicines, trying to keep secretions thin and prevent another morning like today. I am falling asleep here but need t give him that med in one hour, bummer.

Meds given, now he is awake, Hated to wake him, but it was easier on him than this morning.

How many of you know what I mean when I say "the mommy gene?" It controls the ability of women of all ages to hear a pin drop on carpet, if they are overseeing the well being of some one or some thing in need. You anticipate the need, you are standing there with a warm bottle when infant or critter wakes. those kinds of instincts that have to be attached to our DNA, our survival DNA. Weeeelll, my Mommy Gene has activated once again. I hear the machine make a slightly different noise and know it needs watering. I hear his chair squeak and know he is standing to use his urinal. I can tell when he is getting nauseated. . . . well you get the picture. I thought I was too old, that the Mommy gene had gone dormant, NOPE, it is working strong.

Did I break the site? long time no posts.

Morning all. Coffee is ready, help yourself.

Tricia, let me know when you need a refill and I will make a fresh pot. Sorry you had such a poor night.

Just finished frosting 24 cupcakes. Letting the frosting set for a few minutes and then decorating the tops to look like baseballs. Today is Dylan's last regular season game and I am snack mommy. Cupcakes and juice boxes

Off to the N.A.I.L.E. for the morning only. Angel is getting close but she isn't in labor yet.