May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!
Happy New Year!
An agricultural fair is just about the most exciting place ever for me. I mean, how can you not love it? Cows, goats, chickens, bunnies, sheep, the smell of manure, the sight of men walking around eating turkey legs! OK, those last two I could do without. It’s funny, I’m certainly no vegetarian (and as if I need further proof that I’m a big, fat hypocrit, our cow goes to the slaughter house tomorrow…) but it really grosses me out watching people chowing down on those greasy turkey legs. I like my food to look a bit less like the animal I was just feeding grain to, thank you very much! In my defense, I’ve never met our cow much less fed it grain…which would have gotten me in trouble anyway because this cow is grass fed not grain fed so … wait, where was I?
Right, the fair. We had a lot of fun. We saw some farm animals, ate some fried dough, bought Monkey a ridiculously overpriced toy (which he loves, so maybe it wasn’t that overpriced.) The only part of the fair we skipped was the midway. It’s way to overstimulating for Monkey but I don’t much like the midway either. I like to be nice and those people really, really want my money…I feel almost compelled to just walk through and hand out money to everyone. No need to play the games, I’ll just skip to the part where my wallet is empty. We did walk on the very edge of the midway though, it’s hard to avoid, and one of the carnies almost made a huge mistake. He wanted to hand Monkey darts to play one of the games. The problem is Monkey would have just tried to play “catch”…hopefully with the operator but most likely me or Duhdee. He has a good arm, he has hit me with balls before and it stung…trying not to imagine dodging darts. Eep.
I’ll post some pictures tonight. I would do it now but I forgot to download the pictures yesterday because Duhdee and I were too busy rearranging the bedrooms. That was just a ton of fun, let me tell you. I was worried that it might freak Monkey out, he’s not a big fan of change, but he was fine. Barley, our Aussie mix, was not fine. He was so freaked out that everytime I bent over or sat on the floor he was trying to crawl inside my skin…I’m not entirely sure that even that would have been close enough. Poor, crazy mutt. I guess we should have given him his anxiety medication before we started! Next time. Another 6 years seems soon enough for me!
I can be a little…forgetful? scatterbrained?? both??? I’m one of those people who will get out of the car, lock the doors, put the keys in my pocket and then forget where I put the keys until they turn up in the dryer. Oops. (Those little clicker things don’t like being washed and dried, FYI.) And I do this stuff a lot….I take the clip out of my hair and then 10 minutes later I can’t find it. I take my wedding ring off and put it somewhere “safe” and forget where that safe place was. I try on two different shoes to decide which to wear and when I make the decision I leave the rejected shoe wherever I was standing and move on with my day…later I can’t find both of my shoes. I finish talking on the phone and I carry it around until I set it down…somewhere.
Poor Duhdee trails along behind me grabbing the keys and hanging them up, putting the phone back on the base, helping me search for my hair clips, reminding me where that other $&(*&%^( shoe is. It makes him a little crazy.
Last night I realized that Monkey is a mini-Duhdee in this regard. When I walked through the front door he told me to take off my jacket and pointed toward the closet. He told me to take off my shoes and pointed to the front hall closet again. He followed me around while I was talking on the phone and, when I finished, he took the phone from my hand and put it away. It’s rather funny, I do what he tells me without even thinking about it which makes Duhdee smirk and mutter something about Monkey having me wrapped around his finger. I’m not really sure Duhdee’s reaching the right conclusion though, the way I see it Umma has two assistants doing all the stuff she never remembers to do 😉
I decided to redo our bedroom closet. I blame the 2010 Ikea catalog. Ever since it arrived I’ve been paging through it and thinking which led me to browsing the website and even more thinking. All that thinking led me to suggest an Ikea trip on Friday even though I knew it was the very last place on earth we should be taking Monkey that day. I did not buy a single thing (for the closet) but the damage was done…all that thinking had led to ideas.
Here is a picture of our closet. Please take a moment to prepare yourself for the horror.
That is the ONLY closet in our bedroom. It is 47″ wide, 19″ deep and 97.5″ tall. Monkey’s room has two closets of this approximate size and then there is the linen closet in the hall. That’s it folks. Old houses have c-r-a-p for closets! And this picture is the improved version. When we started there was just one single rod in that closet, we added the shelves/rods you see here…and that lower shelf? It ends right there only 1/2 way across the closet. Oh, and, above the top shelf? About 2 feet of totally empty space.
So using all my ideas I spent several quality hours with a tape measure and graph paper trying to figure out some sort of better solution. Because the closet is so shallow (just barely wide enough for hangers) none of the traditional solutions would fit.
When it was all said and done we moved the top shelf all the way up by the ceiling. Since Duhdee is tall he can easily reach that rod. We’ll hang his shorter hanging stuff up there and our long hanging stuff will be to the right (we don’t have much!) As close to the bottom as we could manage, we put in another shelf and rod that goes the full length of the closet. The long hanging stuff will come just to the top of that bottom shelf. More shorter hanging stuff will be on that lower rod. All that unused space at the top will now be between Duhdee’s short hanging stuff and that bottom shelf. We can put some storage boxes there for additional storage and we gained an extra 21″ of hanging space too. That’s the best we can do since we cannot enlarge it in any way.
Of course, not a single Ikea idea was used but I still blame the catalog!
This is just the first step in our bedroom make-over. Then we’ll paint the walls. Take another look at that picture above…do you see that whitish area on the wall to the very left? That’s a REFLECTION. Great Grampy insisted we use high gloss paint. You can see your REFLECTION in our walls. That, coupled with the blue, means that room feels as warm and cozy as an ice cube. We’ve wanted to repaint pretty much since it dried but we ran out of time and had to move on to other rooms so we could move in.
I guess technically the next step is redoing the wiring so it is 1. up to code and 2. so “we” can install a flat screen and media center which will allow me to lounge in bed watching all my DVR’d shows while Duhdee feeds me peeled grapes (a girl can dream, right?) but that’s not my job. Duhdee is on his own for that. I’d electrocute myself and probably burn the house down to boot. *Shrug* No one is perfect.
Duhdee records all of his shows on our DVR for easy reference. I’ll buy the cookbook coming out this fall. Whenever we want to try a new food we check with Alton first. The geekiness combined with the yumminess is just irresistible!
So, when Duhdee bought himself a new toy I thought, “Alton would not approve. It is a uni-tasker!” The new toy was delivered today and tomorrow Duhdee will be preparing us WAFFLES! Yes, Duhdee is the sort of guy who buys himself a “toy” and it is actually a professional waffle maker….and he buys it from Woot! at a killer price even…this man is a keeper!
I immediately started chiding him about his slick new uni-tasker. Duhdee took the position that sometimes you just need a uni-tasker, nothing else will do…that Alton would agree. Five minutes later I was on the Alton Brown website buying Duhdee two new t-shirts and some nifty plunger cups…not because Duhdee was right (and he was but do NOT tell him I admitted that TYVM) but because, as I said, the geekiness is irresistible.
And, yes, that is our entertainment here on a Saturday night..that’s just how we roll here at Chez Monkey.
Someone start a petition 🙂 We made the most of what we had this time around.
Minutes after I left work Friday and, fortunately, moments after I stepped onto the subway, I received an e-mail message that nearly put an end to all of our weekend plans! But, since I rock, I managed to do all the necessary documents from home on Friday night and thus saved the weekend! Woo hoo! Having had such a near miss, we decided to put some distance between ourselves and the city 🙂
On Saturday, we drove up to Maine to check in on our garden and visit with my grandfather. We have POTATOES people! I am so excited.
OK, OK, they’re tiny but they weren’t done growing. I pulled up one plant to make sure the wet weather we had this past June didn’t rot them in the ground. They look perfect. And small. But they still have lots of growing left. Other than the potatoes we had 4 squash plants that survived and one, single, lonely stalk of corn. The deer ate the bush beans. Duhdee and I have already figured out the plan for next year.
After the quick check-in at the garden we stopped to visit Papa. He’s had some health issues this summer but he’s looking darn good now. Especially good for someone who is 88! We had a really nice visit. I needed some advice on the potatoes because I’ve never grown them and he offered me his potato digger when I’m ready to dig them up. Score! (To be honest I have no idea what a potato digger is but he said he keeps it in his truck because he “Uses it for everything.” I am intrigued.)
After gabbing for a couple of hours, we stopped by the grocery store my cousin is working at this summer. She was very popular, we had to stand in line to visit…then Monkey threw a fit because that’s what he does in the check-out line these days. No idea why, it’s a PITA 🙂 While we were waiting Monkey kept saying her name and grinning at her. He needs to spend more time with her, I think. She needs to babysit more often. Ahem.
When we finally left the store we realized we were going to have to eat dinner on the road so, instead of jumping on the highway and hoping to find something appealing, we drove to a little neighborhood store that has a deli and take-out counter. We grabbed some food and ate on the sea wall. After eating we let Monkey play in the surf. It was starting to get a little rough due to Hurricane Bill but it wasn’t too bad. He only goes in ankle deep anyway. He did end up drenched after he lost his balance and fell into the path of a wave, lol. We still carry a full change of clothes with us everywhere though (leftover reaction from a couple of the darkest potty training days) so he had something dry to ride home in.
After yet another stop, this time for ice cream, we drove home. It was after 9 before we got Monkey to bed but it was a great day and he didn’t mind the late night.
Today we stuck closer to home. I picked the carrots in the garden and a couple cherry tomatoes. Duhdee bought a bushel of corn (that is 5 dozen ears of corn!) and we prepped all of that for freezing (he’s actually finishing up right now, lol, don’t tell him I snuck away to blog!) He also bought 8 quarts of tomatoes which we’ll freeze as sauce. Ok, that doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s taken 9 HOURS. I am pooped.
Two quick Monkey stories to reward you for making it to the end…
Saturday, before we left for Maine, Monkey lay down on the living room floor and looked under the couch. He asked Duhdee (Ewik!) repeatedly to look under the couch. Finally, Duhdee asked him, “What is under the couch?” And Monkey replied…if I had any pride I would not share this…”Dirt!” I checked, he’s right.
Also on Saturday, before we left for Maine, Monkey finally made my words come back to haunt me. Oh yes he did! And it’s plain as day. And today he ratted out which of his irresponsible parents he was repeating by adding “dogs” to make a sentence, it wasn’t me, haha!
So now he has said two complete sentences, “Iwangohome” and “F**Kdadogs .” It’s a misquote because what Duhdee actually said was “F***king dogs” when he found that one had gotten into the trash for the eighty billionth time. We are trying to convince him that he’s saying “Frog,” we need to tell the teacher something!
While we were in Madison we had our afternoons free. We spent a lot of time here:
The best thing about the pool was that the shallow end was only 3 FT deep so Monkey could walk around that end on his own. He was really unsure about it at first but once he gained some confidence he loved it. He really enjoyed watching Duhdee and I go under water. He even tried out my nose holding technique and went under himself once.
I really loved the downtown/Capitol Square part of Madison. The capitol building is beautiful (it’s a replica of the Capitol Building in D.C.) I took lots of pictures of it, lol.
Another favorite spot was Monana Terrace:
We were especially fond of the rooftop garden.
Monkey really loved the fountain.
He really, really loved the fountain.
We also enjoyed the Henry Vilas Zoo, Monkey was much more interested in the goats than in any of the other more exotic animals but that’s OK. I enjoyed feeding them too, lol. They were much friendlier than the grizzly bear who looked at us like he wanted to eat us…thank goodness for moats!
Even though we eventually tired of restaurant food we really enjoyed the Great Dane Pub and Brewing Co. (they have a great kid’s menu), Lombardinos (our waiter was so amazing with Monkey he got a 50% tip, lol, and the pizza was divine) and Bluephies (great food and very nice, yet kid friendly, atmosphere). Bluephies is right next to Wingra Park. We spent our last evening there just watching the boats and the ducks on the lake. I wish we’d gone there earlier and tried out one of the paddle boats!
I would totally recommend Madison for a visit, it seemed more than a little random but it was a great place to take Monkey. Another think that impressed me was the Greater Madison Convention and Visitor Bureau website, it was a huge help in planning the trip. I like a good website and it really is very well done.
I promised pictures and I shall deliver…
Any vacation that includes my dad, includes lots of this…
It also now includes some of this:
Monkey is a fan, he’s a little heavy on the throttle though so you do have to be careful to not stand too close to the rear of the boat…
Since we had experienced 40 days and 40 nights of rain (pretty close, seriously) there was a little bit of this involved in vacation too…
Both Duhdee and Monkey enjoy that, so it was a win-win situation. What about that large pile of wood, you ask? That turned into this:
At first Monkey was content to supervise…no, not really…we had to lock him in the house to keep him from running out dressed in..well…like this:
But after we were able to convince him to wear some clothes, he went out to help like this:
And this (he’s working the trigger, Duhdee is applying the force):
It was totally safe. So was this *ahem* (I have to admit this was my idea, Grampa was going to use his truck which just seemed like overkill…it was only built a couple inches too close to the house, lol):
And what was Umma doing during all of this? She was taking pictures of this (MOOSE!)
Which was here (!) Grampa says it happens all the time:
She also did an awful lot of this:
*Bliss*
Is it any wonder I tried to convince Duhdee to stay another week??
