The nose knows what time it is

Don't let me startle you showing up blogside unannounced. I just thought I'd jot down an observance I made while going over some photos from a recent family trip.

I took a few of the usual "See, look, we've left the house!" pics of the various things we saw and experienced while on our getaway to Big Cedar.(BEAUTIFUL place, by the way.)

But now I'll deviate to the less predictable but palpably deeper reason I'm here.

Upon checking the pic my mom took of the hubby and myself, I happened to notice my nose had taken a stronger role on my face than it normally does. In the first photo I chalked it up to indiscriminate posing but then it went on to repeat its flared looks in each shot to follow. I'm not sure what this means. I don't even think it seems bigger than usual in that way that people say your nose keeps growing as you age. I just found it to be more nostril forward.

(I've got flare)

I wonder why my face is morphing before my eyes- under my eyes. I didn't feel I was the least bit stressed or strained, fatter or thinner than I was a smooth-nostriled couple months ago. It was simply as if I now found the world to be just a tiny bit stinkier than before. And you know what? Maybe. I. do.

Now, what about you? Is your nose behaving? Have you glanced in the mirror recently and seen a droopy eyed sharp shnozzed guy or gal gazing back? Perhaps there are two of you now?

Maybe this is just what forty-two looks like for me without the use of daily moisturizer. I rather hoped I'd age like a fine cheese since I eat so much of it, but apparently I'm taking a more of a Pete's Dragon approach to the decades ahead. Hey, at least I've got some tufted pink hair in my future! Now, off to practice my harmless quizzical look.

Smell you later,

Shans

**For more titillating topics like this, join me next time when I ponder visibly whether or not my newly bending pinky finger keeps bending.

If you give a Shan a toilet...*

(this toilet knows what it's capable of)

She's gonna want a new floor(without duct tape on it) to seal it to.

If you let her pick out a new bathroom floor..

She's gonna want the claw footed tub painted a fresh new color.

If you are already removing the tub for flooring..

She's gonna want you to go ahead and take the cabinet with the mauve countertop out too.

Since you are changing the color scheme this much already...

She's gonna want to paint the whole room.

While shopping for a tiny patch of flooring and new paint, Shan's gonna see the carpet samples....

Then, she's going to want to use your tax refund to get new carpet in all the rooms upstairs.

But, while cleaning the dingy base boards...

She's gonna want to paint the trim in each room.

Painting the trim is going to be so easy without worrying about making a mess on the old floors...

She's gonna decide at least one more room needs painting.

With all the room rearranging, painting, and garage sale gathering and sloughing going on...

you'll somehow end up with another set of bunk beds. (???)

So alas, what is the lesson we all learn at one point or another in our lives...

Replacing a toilet can be QUITE an ordeal!

A guilty Grinch grin is forming across my face as we speak.

Kinda reminds me of the time I needed a new oven...

* This, of course, is a play on the well known Children's book 'If you give a mouse a cookie..'

Cat tells

The other day I went outside and came upon a cat,

who sat upon my lap.

Then another happened along,

and it soon became a throng....

(My back fence this very morning)

Ok, so I'm back to the blog after a brief hiatus. I told the facebookers a couple days ago that I had rushed inside and jotted down some things I've been pondering about cats (Yes, I DO realize that sends up a freak flag with a paw on it, but I'm ok with that.) And, since that brought out a few of my fellow cat loving freaks friends, as well as a few that just enjoy a side show- I figured I'd share.

It wasn't really a list of questions to be answered by other cat "enthusiasts" (That sounds better right?), but more a batch of thoughts pertaining to cats that might be better expressed in the Jeff Foxworthy way. So here were my passing cat fancies:

You might be a Catlady if....

...you seriously ponder purchasing a 3ft. tall rod iron cat shaped plant holder from a store called "Oops!"- though it is quite clear you are not a "plant person".

... you coax a cat you've never seen before over to you, then let it lay on your lap for thirty minutes while it kneads it's claws into your wrist.

...you look deep into previously mentioned cat's eyes as it adores you, and wonder if it could possibly be an angel sent in this form with a special message just for you. Then you wait a moment for it.

...on your wedding day your friends and family all make a pact to not tell you about the incident involving the cat in the parking lot of the church.

...you yell out "Kittee!!" into the darkness only to realize you may have been talking to a decorative rock in someone's yard.

...you have a "great idea" of what to stencil on your cork board, but are reminded with a sigh from your husband that this particular room already has at least thirteen other pictures of cats in it.

...once upon a time you looked in the mirror and regularly saw a resemblance between you and your cat Tigger.

...your current pets also remind you of him.
And finally, you might be a Catlady if you can come up with such a list about YOURSELF!

Have a purrfectly splended weekend! Meow.

Did I forget to share my meat cake with you?

Shame on me and my big fake fingernails!

One of the fun things that happened (and I documented) during the hoobity whatie part of the holidays was Santa's (and Trisha's) Magical X-mas party. Oh yes, it was DElightfully tacky. I'm suddenly feeling likewise myself just now posting about last year's fun here on this mid January day in 2 ot 10. BUT, still I want to share these olden times with family and friends who might have missed out, and of course future me who won't remember any of it very very soon.

I made a progressive photo log of the "Christmas cake with a smack of ham" that I contributed to the party. I thought it would be kind of fun to see it come about in pictures.

• FIRST, I lined the tree shaped cake pan with crustless flattened white bread. (I seem to have forgotten this photo so I'll leave a space and you can mentally squish and press the bread to your liking.)

• Next I smeared 4 cans of deviled ham(a little gelatinous for my taste) evenly on the bread and up the sides.

• Then I lovingly placed olive loaf slices atop the canned ham continuing on in the tree shape.

• Next I topped the compressed lunchmeat with a sizable bowl of homemade chicken salad. This part I would happily eat.

• Once I got that smeared around, I smashed another layer of white bread on top like so...

• With much anticipation, I then turned that sucker of a sammy right over onto a foil lined tray. It was nothing short of albino splendor. See if you agree.

• Once that was all done, I "iced" the colourless conifer with cream cheese and "trimmed" it with celery and festive radish ornaments(that hubby styled whimsically with a knife).

• And BOOM goes the dynamite! All it needed now was generic Ruffles and a Twilight plate!

Here it is joining T's corndog casserole, the classic Ants on a log and Dorothy's clear jello among other tastefully tacky treats.

So there you have it!

I hope you plan on making a holiday meat cake at your next gathering! It's just as easy as putting on pantyhose if you have the right shape to smash it into! I also have a Big Bird and Bugs Bunny shaped cake pans (funny what you find when you uproot your cabinets) just begging to ham it up for your guests!

Enjoy! You know we did! Thanks for all the fun Trishie!

Talent show: Day 4

Ever since we started the talent show entries the dogs have been hounding me to get in on the action. You know how camera hungry small dogs can be. So while we round up Jamey's entry, we thought it would be a good time to put in a little Christmas number the T & T (dynomite) recently worked up. Of course, when it was my idea to finally film it they totally gave me the disinterested faces of teenagers. Whatever lickies.

So here they are without their Christmas hats or spirits (a contractual compromise):

Tiki and Tulip

Trust me, I've been this ridiculous for years. ;)

Talent Show: Day 3

I have a wicked laugh.

As the show goes on, you may be increasingly afraid of what we here at Bergville refer to as talent. Well, if laughing is not a talent it surely must be a creative outlet of some sort, because I've been changing it up for years! And my laugh has never really been considered mainstream. It has gone everywhere from Bahahaha(like Arnold on Happy Days but long morphed into breathy and fake sounding) to a brief equestrian period in high school in which I whinnied like a reared up horse and earning the nickname "Wildfire" from a close friend.

To this day, my chortle has become a veritable cacophony of glottal fricatives that occasionally even surprise me with their uniqueness. (Odd sentences are also a talent of mine.)

This was one such occasion. You have to watch all the way to the end which means enduring one of Dandy's T-rex moments also caught on tape. :}

What made me laugh was that I had just stepped onto and flattened Jamey's collection of paper boats that he had been ever so carefully lighting and launching into the water as you see in the video.

All I could do was laugh my "I'm soooorrrrrryyyy" the way I do when I find myself in a sudden pickle. Please enjoy-and remember to leave the hearty laughter to trained professionals such as myself to avoid harm. ;)

Object betrayal

I was traumatized by my medical supplies last night and I wanted to share it with my lovely readers today as it reminded me of recent incident that happened to another thumb I'm fond of.

Warning: This post contains some material that may be too graphic for some.

Please read with caution or avoid all together. :}

Were you too busy looking at his sweet face to see this?

On a recent trip to OKC to visit my parents, Monkey Fingers McGraw(a.k.a. Dandy) got himself into a little scuffle with a stapler.

My mom, Dandy, and I had just popped in for the briefest visit to her office for troubleshooting (or something I can't now recall), before heading off to do our favorite form of geocaching-shopping!

Instead, as you can see, Dandy immediately fired a staple into his finger and then began screaming one continuos shrill note that lasted without breath until I airlifted him out of the office and into the car. (Need your workday spiced up? Call on us.)

Now, I've stapled my thumb before as a child, perhaps you have too. Normally, this type of wound is quickly taken care of when you pluck the thing out, daub it off, and get a band-aid topped with a kiss for your troubles. Because this was a stapler that is used to dealing with insurance claims, that thing fired with the tenacity of a tail gunner and went straight into my baby's little thumb bone and it was not coming out!

So with an ER visit, an x-ray,one hemostat, and a trip to the pharmacy for antibiotics, our "brief troubleshooting" errand had a lot more trouble and shooting in it than we'd bargained for.

Now, back to me.

I wear an insulin pump that uses infusion sets that have to be changed every three to four days. The ones I use have an inserting device that is extremely spring loaded and tends to "insert" the plastic tube coated needle with a lot of force. (Still with me?)

I've hired this male model to show you what they look like. We'll call him Mylan.

Thank you Mylan for that tiny thumbnails worth of ab you've given us. Next time bring no less than an 8x10 if you want consideration! VERY disappointing sir!

Anyway, I had my spot picked out and was pinching up some skin for the needle that goes in at an angle almost parallel to the surface skin.(Notice Mylan's other hand was well out of frame). I fired it in and got a pain in my thumb that felt like the wide plastic coated needle had poked me and rammed right into my nail on the other side of my thumb! That's because it did.

I said "OUCH!" which sometimes I say anyway, but this time I kind of yelled it indignantly. Then I looked down to find that not only had I failed to get my port inserted properly, I had managed to shoot the two inch needle into my stomach, out through another place and then into my thumb all at the same time!

It totally bruised my thumb and my feelings as well when I realized I'd been shish-kabob-bed by my own "user friendly" device.

After daubing my wounds and inserting a new site, I laid down to go to sleep and could feel that my face was still frowning. I have been known to feel sorry for myself when I get fed up with the ins and outs of stupid Diabetes(like the time when I looked down with a syringe in my mouth and stuck myself in the boob). But, this was a different feeling, like a betrayal of trust between me and an inanimate object. That's strange.

I know that actually it was just a simple case of user error like Dandy's stapler incident (and, yes, my accidental boob injection). And, in the end I found myself saying the same thing he said while holding up his freshly stapled thumb.

"Ohhh, I shouldn't have done that!"

No, you really shouldn't have.