Friday Fragments!

It's that time of the week for Friday Fragments! Head on over to Mrs. 4444's blog who is the originator of this fine topic and read her Fragments as well as the fragments of other lovely bloggers! Happy Fragmenting!

*The visit with my parents last weekend was great. My only issue was that it went by too fast! I've missed them a lot more than I ever thought I would. I love that my relationship with my parents has gotten stronger as I've gotten older. I feel like I can be very open and honest with them and they don't run and hide when I do open up!

**Stupid OB-GYN! I get some bad test results, they call and tell me they've made a referral and I need to call and schedule the appointment, I do that and I'm told that because of the baby boom on Fort Campbell I'll have to be seen off post (I'M NOT HAVING A BABY I JUST NEED A TEST, GEEZE!) which means I will have to call Tri-Care and get the preferred provider list and choose a GYN from there...oh, and you won't be able to call until next Tuesday! So, let me get this straight....you call me with bad news, alarm me, worry me, and stress me out and then tell me there will be no clarification on what is wrong with me until after next Tuesday considering I seriously doubt the new doctor will be able to get me in right away. GRR!

***OK, here's a T.M.I. moment (I debated on whether or not to include this but oh well...) Phantom Poop: Does everyone have it? Where does it go? Does it leave anyone else wondering "Did I really poop or was that a figment of my imagination?" Ok, yeah, probably just have skipped over that fragment but I was just wondering.

****While on my drive home from East TN I saw a guy with his arm out the window. The window was not all the way down but about a quarter of the way down. Interesting. I begin to pass him and he lowers his arm in the car, picks his nose, and puts his arm back out the window. GROSS! He continued to do this for at least 5 miles...ggggghhhh!

*****Unfortunately I ended up going to East TN the same weekend as the NASCAR race. Therefore, I got to experience idiots on the interstate driving like they were NASCAR drivers.

******I think I've blogged before about caption writers spelling things wrong. Well, I was watching Intervention recently, you know the show about addiction, my name is Mrs. Ski, M-r-s. S-k-i, and while deciphering what addict was saying they spelled Lortab and Xanax in caption in the following ways: "Loritab" and "Xanex" Come on people! You broadcast a show based on drug addiction! The funniest part was that they spelled both of the drug names right later on in the show. Sidebar: I know how to spell these drugs because I worked in pharmacies for 6+ years, not because I am a pill popper. Although a Xanax while flying really calms the nerves!

*******And now for the Mitch Hedberg quote of the week: "I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, "You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit." As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit."

The Art of Screening

I'm the youngest of four girls. We were raised in a pretty conservative, fairly strict home and there were restrictions on what we could watch and read and what age we could start watching and reading certain things. In elementary school this was no big deal for me, my friends liked me anyways and I rarely got made fun of; aside from the time in fifth grade when my leotard fell out of my back pack and I was taunted by all the boys who lovingly referred to it as a onesie. But I digress. Things were rough for me in middle school...all three years....as I'm sure it was rough on the majority of my peers. You can probably guess but I got teased, ganged up on (not sexually just by mean girls), made fun of, talked about, and in general had a horrible experience for those three years. High school was better, I joined the swim team and made new friends don't get me wrong though I still got made fun of but it was a little easier to accept since I knew I'd always have the swim team. You couldn't pay me to redo middle school....not now, not EVER!

Whoa! I'm really off topic. Back to screening. I know that my parents watched movies and tv shows first to ensure they were appropriate and read books first to ensure that the material was suitable for my eyes. As an adult I can truly appreciate their protecting my innocence but as a child, specifically in middle school, I found their protectiveness a lot of things but I never appreciated them for doing it. I had never seen MTV until I was a senior in high school and that was because I snuck and watched it at my grandparents (they had the good cable), I couldn't listen to mainstream radio other than the christian or oldies stations until I was in 7th or 8th grade, I wasn't allowed to read teen girl magazines but as an alternative my mom got me a subscription to a christian teen girl magazine, and the protective list goes on and on. The reason I'm telling you all this is because those things I just listed only encouraged my peers to test what I "knew." And when I didn't know something they knew about, it warranted more teasing, taunting and the like. I cried a lot in middle school. I never talked to my parents about it, I don't know why. But those three years were the worst years I've experienced so far.

There are a couple of interesting things that have come from not only my middle school experience but also from being protected by my parents from inappropriate things.

• I became more compassionate towards others being teased.
• I learned who my true friends were.
  
• While I haven't learned to not care about what other's feel about me...I feel like I care less.
• I feel the need to read a book first before passing it on to my mom.
• I also need to watch a movie first before I will either recommend it to my parents or watch it with them.
• I find myself cringing when I'm watching a movie with my parents and there is a sex scene, excessive cursing, etc.

It's funny to me that I now feel like I need to screen things for my parents. I mean, they are adults and can watch and read whatever they like but I still feel like I shouldn't recommend things that I haven't pre-approved for parental viewing. Ha! I guess it's one big circle of protectiveness. OH, and just so you know I wouldn't change a single thing about how my parent's raised me...I may have hated it at the time...but they definitely knew what they were doing and I only wish I would have trusted their judgement more. My 12 year old self is disputing this fact probably because she wants to watch Real World and read Seventeen...but I've tuned her whining out. My parent's are awesome...and that's something my 12 year old self might even agree to. :)

Help find Chy!

I saw this tragic story on See Kori Rant's page and felt like I needed to put a word out there for Chy...even though my blog doesn't get many hits, maybe it will help. This little girl was taken by her non-custodial father and they are believed to be somewhere in Colorado. Please visit Chy's mom's website Find Chy to read her story and help find Chy. No child deserves this and no mother either. I do hope that they find Chy soon and her father is punished for what he's put this family through.

Picture Post!!

I am having a serious lapse in blog topics so I thought I would do a picture post...I've never really done one of these so bear with me! I think if I had gone to bed before 3:30 a.m. that maybe I would have some stellar ideas but alas, no. I AM excited because I got 12 comments on my Friday Fragments posts! Ok, all you big bloggers who get tons of comments can laugh now! I'll wait for you to finish.... :) It's exciting to me because I'm a fairly new blogger and that's the most comments I have EVER gotten! But now onto pictures! All of these are SOOTC (straight out of the camera).

This first picture is of the ginormous Oak Tree in our back yard that got struck by lightning....
A cool mushroom in our yard...glad I got a picture of it because the tree people cut down the tree it was attached to.


The next few are of Gidget. Since we don't have kids and Mr. Ski hates modeling I had to use Gidget as my subject while I was testing out my new gear. She's not the most cooperative model!
These are what a tree looks like that's been struck by lightning...


These are from when they were dropping the bulk of the tree...they had already cut off several branches...and man did it make a loud boom when it landed!
And if this ever happens to you, your yard will look like this....


This little one belongs to the guy who cut our tree down...he was so cute!
On that note, this concludes the picture post! Hope you enjoyed!

Friday Fragments!

It's that time of the week for Friday Fragments! I've been a slacker lately but Mrs. 4444 never complains about my random Friday Fragments posts! She's a gem, truly a gem! Head on over to Mrs. 4444's blog to check out her Friday Fragments, read the Fragments posted by other lovely bloggers and post your own!

*I have been SO spacey lately. Last weekend we came home...I let Mr. Ski in the house and then was taking a small smoke break outside before going to bed (I know...bad Mrs. Ski!). After I was done I headed in and went on to bed. The next morning as I was trying to leave the house I couldn't find my keys for the life of me. I dumped out my purse...no keys. I looked on all the tables in the house...no keys. I scoured the bedroom...no keys. And then it hit me. I opened the front door and looked on the porch and there sat my keys on the patio table! Wow, I left them out there all night. Someone could have stolen my car or worse walked into our house without us even knowing. This experience did however make me feel better about our neighborhood.

**I saw the biggest slug I've ever seen. Have I already talked about this?! I think I have but oh well. It was on the side of our house...and I removed it with a stick. Mr. Ski told me that he too had seen the infamous giant slug back in the same place it was before. I guess it has a thing for our house. OH, I remember I did talk about this and was going to post a picture so take a look at the HUGE slug below!

***You know you go to Taco Bell entirely TOO much when the drive thru lady is convinced that you either work at a Taco Bell or used to work at Taco Bell. She had a full on conversation with me through the intercom about how if I didn't work at Taco Bell or didn't used to work there then I definitely should! Geesh!

****Mr. Ski is sick. I'm very fortunate though because there is very little if any whining. I think the only reason he doesn't whine is because he deals with pain every single day so having the flu doesn't really cause him to whine. I know that he doesn't feel good because he sighs a lot and you can hear and see that he doesn't feel the best. I feel so bad for him...I hope this is just the regular flu and I really hope I don't come down with it. ::fingers crossed:: He was angry with me this morning because I told him I thought I was coming down with something and he tried to give me some Zicam. But I hate those things...it's like sucking on an orange flavored piece of metal. So I probably will not get any sympathy if I do get sick because I refused the "cure."

*****I'm going to visit my mom and dad next weekend. Mr. Ski can't go because of football so I'll be making the drive to East TN all alone. It's not that bad...and up until Mr. Ski and I got married I always made the trip alone. My dad has a small trip so it will just be me and my mom for the majority of the weekend. I'm really excited and it makes me even more excited when I find out that she's as excited too! I've definitely missed quality time with my parents so I'm really looking forward to the weekend!

******So tired...need a nap.

And finally a quote from my most favorite comedian, Mitch Hedberg:
"Whenever I walk, people try to hand me out fliers, and when someone tries to hand me out a flier, it’s kinda like they’re saying, “Here, you throw this away.”

OMG! Snuggie Dog!!!!

Just when I thought the Snuggie craze was almost coming to an end I heard about this on NPR...and I just had to check out the website where I saw THIS video:



OK, just a couple of points.

1. Don't you just LOVE how infomercials make the simplest things look impossible?! Granted it is tough to put dog sweaters on but I don't give up that easily. But of course, I'm not just referring to this one infomercial, I have seen tons that have depicted a person doing a task that generally isn't that difficult but is made to look like it's the hardest, most inconvenient thing in the world. This is one of mine and Mr. Ski's favorite things to laugh at when we're not able to fast forward commercials.

2. Quick Question: Since when does a dog's fur not keep it warm...isn't that fur's job?

3. I love how there is a dog whimpering during every scene where the pooch ISN'T wearing a Snuggie Dog. Poor puppy has been so so sad because he hasn't had a Snuggie Dog.

4. The talking dog collar. Pretty Cool. And so much easier than those silly metal tags with the information engraved on them. At least with the engraved tags you don't have to worry about the batteries dying or the tag getting wet and since when is it so hard to READ a tag.

5. Maybe I should get one for Gidget and make my own video. I have a feeling she won't like the Snuggie any more than she likes the other ridiculous items of clothing I put on her like this:

Or this:

I have to admit though, Gidget really does enjoy wearing that sassy red dress. Who wouldn't?! I think that the only reason she doesn't mind it is because it's not as restraining as some of the other outfits.

I will admit that I have more outfits...just a couple sweaters and a hoodie to be exact but I have always vowed to never spend more than ten dollars on them and usually they are really cheap dog clothes on sale. For instance, the red dress above I got for the bargain price of a DOLLAR! I really wish I could find other pictures. Although, I think I've embarrassed myself enough already gushing about outfits for my DOG. I think a baby might cure this obsession but also think...that's no reason to have a baby.

I will definitely post pictures if I get the urge to buy a Snuggie Dog for Gidget....I'm thinking that Mr. Ski will not condone this purchase. So maybe not.