moar funny pictures

My sister's dog, Cookie, love-child of Marty Feldman & Bette Davis, before she was liberated from camp.

She speaks to a larger life issue, yes.

It sukz to be a small kwazy bouncy creature, all pent up in a sterile environment, doesn't it?

Don't worry, tho, there's a nice lady coming to your rescue.

; )

.........a year makes!

This weekend, aside from being my oldest son's 12th birthday (!) marks the one year anniversary of me getting Das reorganizing Boot from my old job of 8 years.

Contrary to worst-case-scenario thinking.......I feel like the luckiest woman in the world right now, and I want to buy the whole world a drink and kiss it on the lips!

Well, almost. heh. The drastic reduction in income is'nt fun. Especially with holidays looming. The crazy mis match of work/kids/home organization is also something I am still struggling to get a handle on.

Really, after nearly 10 years of neglect, this house inhabited by 2 small boys, one big one and me is a tangled mess of an aging hairball. Its psychically draining trying to prioritize the things that need doing, & separate them from the things that need thinking about, the things that would be nice to accomplish (one fine day) and the things that are best left alone until someone (like the next owners of the house) do them.

Add to that, the low hum of occasional freelance work, both in and out of home-office, new role as after school homeworkin' w/the kids Mom, and cookin' dinner gal, and I could be stirring up to implode on short notice. (Especially after seeing the latest property tax bills come in over the transom. NOT fun, I can tell you)

But I'm not.

Oddly enough, it still isnt nearly as horrible as my old job. I'm not feeling the NEED to have a double scotch on the rocks at 6;30 here like I did then. The boys can be mind-numbingly pre-adolescent, deaf to the sound of my voice, and oblivious to even the most basic notions of civil behaviors.....and STILL I fail to crave the monkey on my back that was my regular bi-weekly paycheck.

The cost of it was just too high.

Yes, I am naive. Often. Incredibly. But it STILL amazes me the way grow people act sometimes. I dealt with things in-office in the last few years, I would NEVER have imagined I'd see again after leaving jr high school. And not just occasionally, but routinely, predictably and increasingly.

If I had know in 6th grade, that I was going to watch supposedly career minded adult colleagues in their 20's & 30's behave like warring cliques of middle-schoolers, I think I might have killed myself before 9th grade.

I barely made it out of grammar school emotionally alive, back then, and this would have been waaay too much to think about. Ignorance is bliss.

If I had known how seriously twisted and unidentifiable goals could be, how deeply cynical, pathetically base and tyrannically mediocre motives could be...........I might have had an ulcer to go along with the suicide.

And yet, I did not have the intestinal fortitude to make this Great Leap myself. I waited for the axe to fall, never tempting fate by dropping it myself. Too damn scary. I admit. I was frozen in place.

Then, the day I was let go, I put a smile on, and it was genuine. I felt like a gigantic weight had been lifted off my shoulders and I could actually breathe.
But I thought I was just being brave. Feigning cool in the short term, and thinking secretly that when the other shoe dropped, or unemployment ran out etc....that I'd then be in for a horrible time of it.

But no.
Not yet. *knocks wood*

Things work out. Following one's instincts for survival is sometimes a counter-intuitive exercise, but ultimately the Right Thing To Do.

Go figure.

I think I have a career in improv ahead of me.

;o)

The cicadas are still buzzing, though their numbers are dwindling..... mostly they just get tired and slow to a stop. Others go in slightly more noteable ways......

put into a shared journal and passed on.......the wings are real ;o)


*no cicadas were harmed in the making of this artwork*

Having never tried placing a video in a blog b4, with success, I am crossing my fingers and hoping this works. If it does you will see a couple seconds worth of my boys 'collection' from this morning, and a hapless Storm trooper, being fed to the ginormous creepy crawlies!



Will it work?
If not, heres a few stills....

Trooper lifting out of cicada pit...



Cicada emerging on a blade of grass on our parkway....


Teeming mass of life collected this morning. Then released.

Cicadas, that is.
The 17 year kind. Emerging out of our lawn this evening.
My sons were beside themselves with delight and a pair of flashlights, hunting and counting all the little buggers as they climb up out of the grass and across the sidewalk, up the tree in front of the house, and are starting to split open and climb out of their hard shell bodies. Conor tols me he counted 700+. Wow. Whatever the real number of bugs, the fact that he cared enough to count that many speaks to his thrill factor on this. They've been waiting for months for this. I hope its a good show.
We'll see.....the trilling should start soon.

Is about what this is.
So my friends who are on LJ can find me, and I them.
I don't much think I can maintain more than one journal online very well, but I am compelled to put a marker here. We'll see how it works out.
In the mean time, if you are looking to get my attention, try Deedlebomb at OkCupid.
She's a regular there.